The Holocaust Violence

Foreword:
Holocaust, The Jews and Anti-Semitism

Since Zionism, Judaism and the Holocaust have been the subjects of countless debates, it will be useful, first, to clarify some fundamental principles. The rest of the book must be understood and viewed within the framework of the points made in this foreword.

The Truth Behind the Holocaust

Considering the dimensions of the genocide and cruelty inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews and other nations during World War II, we need to make it quite clear that we totally oppose all forms of cruelty, torture and genocide, regardless of religion, race or ethnic origin. We totally denounce the slightest unjust attack on the Jews or any other nation.

This is required by the moral values God commands humanity in the Qur'an, which condemns all those who commit evil, inflict cruelty on others or unjustly take life in this world. As the Qur'an reveals to us, "if someone kills another person—unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the Earth—it is as if he had murdered all mankind." (Qur'an, 5:32) Committing murder is forbidden to all humanity. Our Lord has revealed that the murder of even one single innocent, therefore, is a crime equivalent to the murder of all people.

The Nazis subjected European Jews to indisputable and unforgivable cruelty during World War II. They humiliated, insulted and degraded millions of Jewish civilians, forcing them from their homes and enslaving them in concentration camps under inhuman conditions. The terrible photographs of Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz on the left, or the dead prisoners at Buchenwald below, are sufficient reminders of the scale of the Nazi barbarity.

During Word War II and the years leading up to it, many Jews were subjected to great barbarity and slaughter. We unreservedly condemn the killings and oppression of these Jews and other innocent people by the Nazis, or anyone else. There can be absolutely no justification for the cruelty inflicted on the tens of millions who lost their lives in World War II (be they German, Russian, British, French, Japanese, Chinese, Gypsies, Croats, Poles, Berbers, Serbs, Arabs, Bosnians or of any other nationalities). Historians estimate that before and during the war, the Nazis killed some 29 million civilians in concentration camps, ghettoes, military murders and political assassinations.

Of the two important subjects covered in this book, one is that Nazi Germany engaged in secret cooperation with some of the founders of the state of Israel. Many may find that quite shocking, but historical facts show that the founders of Israel—some Zionists, in other words—at one time embarked on close cooperation with Nazi Germany, reasoning that Nazi pressure would be an excellent motive for European Jews to migrate to Palestine. Economically and politically, they supported the Nazi empire that was to inflict such terrible savagery on people of their own and many other nations, even applauding the Nazis' racist policies.

This matter is important, because from World War II right up to the present day, the tragic barbarity that the Nazis inflicted on the Jews has been used as a political tool. Certain elements within the state of Israel, in order to justify the State's own policies of occupation and terror and to silence the criticism directed at it, continually hide behind the concept of "the Holocaust." Indeed, the founding of Israel was made possible to a large extent thanks to international support and sympathy inspired by that specter of genocide. Another matter this book shall consider is the fact that the Nazi's policy of extermination was aimed not just at Jews, but also at such other ethnic, religious and social groups as Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, devout Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the physically and mentally handicapped. Certainly the Jewish people, of whom 5.5 million died in concentration camps, were the worst victims of the Nazi barbarity. Yet the total who lost their lives in the camps was more than 11 million, and more than half of them were members of the groups listed above. The genocide inflicted on them needs to be remembered equally as that inflicted on the Jews. To portray Nazi barbarity as aimed solely at the Jews is part of the effort to turn the Holocaust into a political tool, as mentioned earlier, and is very wrong.

The Status of the People of the Book in the Qur'an

Throughout this book we shall be discussing the cruelty inflicted on the Jews, and how some Jews maintained a secret relationship with the Nazis, architects of that oppression. In order to eliminate certain prejudices and misunderstandings, therefore, it will be useful to clarify how we Muslims view Jews and Judaism and to remove any suspicion of anti-Semitism—which inevitably comes to mind whenever such issues are raised for discussion.

In the sight of God, people acquire superiority not according to their languages, race or gender, but according to their godliness. The existence of different races and nations is a cultural wealth, not a reason for war and conflict.

In one verse, God reveals that people must not be judged according to their race, color or ethnic origin, but rather by their morality:

O humanity! We created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you might come to know each other. The noblest among you in God's sight is the one of you who best performs his duty. God is All-Knowing, All-Aware. (Qur'an, 49:13)

The expression "so that you might come to know each other" reveals God's wisdom in creating different races and ethnic origins: Different tribes or nations, all of whom are God's servants, must get to know one another—in other words, learn about each other's different cultures, languages, customs and abilities. One of the intentions behind the existence of different races and nations is cultural richness, not war or conflict.

The morality commanded in that verse and elsewhere in the Qur'an make it absolutely clear that a Muslim must not engage in racism or judge people by their race. For that reason, it is completely out of the question for Muslims to harbor negative feelings about Jews or any other race, simply because of their ethnic origins.

Turning to consider the religion that the Jews follow, we encounter another very important truth revealed in the Qur'an: Jews and Christians are referred to as "People of the Book" and as such, are closer to Muslims than are atheists or pagans. No matter how distorted the Old and the New Testaments have been, leading both Jews and Christians into some false beliefs and practices, at the end of the day they all believe in God and His unity. And all submit to His commandments.

The Qur'an draws an important distinction between the People of the Book and idolaters, particularly in terms of social life. One verse, for example, describes the latter in these terms: "… the idolaters are unclean, so after this year they should not come near the Masjid al-Haram…"(Qur'an, 9:28) That is because idolaters recognize no divine law, possess no moral criteria, and can engage unhesitatingly in all forms of wickedness and perversion.

The People of the Book, however, possess certain moral criteria based on God's revelation, as well as concepts of what is lawful and what is forbidden. That is why it's lawful for Muslims to eat food prepared by the People of the Book. In the same way, Muslim men are permitted to marry women from the People of the Book. In the relevant verse, God says:

Today all good things have been made lawful for you. And the food of those given the Book is also lawful for you and your food is lawful for them. So are chaste women from among the believers and chaste women of those given the Book before you, once you have given them their dowries in marriage, not in fornication or taking them as lovers. But as for anyone who rejects faith, his actions will come to nothing and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers. (Qur'an, 5:5)

These rules show that marriage and the resulting ties of kinship can be established between Muslims and the People of the Book. Each can accept the other's invitations to dine, all of which allow the establishment of warm human relations and a peacefully shared life. Since the Qur'an recommends such moderation and understanding, it is out of the question for us Muslims to hold ideas in conflict with that viewpoint.

Moreover, the Qur'an describes the places where the People of the Book worship as being under God's protection:

… if God had not driven some people back by means of others, monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques, where God's name is mentioned much, would have been pulled down and destroyed. God will certainly help those who help Him—God is All-Strong, Almighty. (Qur'an, 22:40)

Throughout history, Muslim communities have treated members of other races and religions with understanding. The picture shows Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror entering the Hagia Sophia.

This verse shows that all Muslims must behave respectfully towards the places of worship of the People of the Book, as well as protecting them.

Indeed, when one reviews the history of Islam, it is striking that Muslim societies have always treated the People of the Book with moderation and understanding. That was particularly evident in the Ottoman Empire, from which today's Turkey is descended. It is well known that the Jews were expelled from Catholic Spain, but found the right to live peacefully in Ottoman lands. When Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (Mehmed II) captured Constantinople, he allowed Jews and Christians to live there freely. Throughout Ottoman history, the Jews were regarded as a People of the Book and allowed to live in peace.

Neither the practices of Inquisition stemming from bigotry, nor anti-Semitism born out of racist ideas—both of which have blackened European history—ever appeared in the Islamic world. The 20th-century conflict between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East arose only when some Jews turned to the racist ideology of radical Zionism, which is not compatible with religious morals, and for which Muslims are in no way responsible.

In conclusion, it is absolutely out of the question for us Muslims, who think along the commandments of the Qur'an, to feel any hostility towards the Jews because of their religion or beliefs.

The Dark Roots of Anti-Semitism

The ideology known as anti-Semitism is a pagan teaching that no Muslim could possibly adopt.

To realize that, we need to examine the roots of anti-Semitism. The term is generally understood to mean "hatred of Jews," though it really means "hatred of the Semites"—in other words, of all Semitic peoples: Arabs, Jews and some other Middle Eastern ethnic groups. There are close similarities between Semitic cultures and languages. For example, Arabic and Hebrew closely resemble one another.

The neo-pagan movement born in the 19th century maintained that European societies should return to pre-Christian paganism. Some neo-pagans, inimical to Divine religions such as Judaism and Christianity, favored the barbarian lifestyle of pagan societies. The Nazi propaganda poster (top right) equates the SS with ancient pagan warriors.

The second great linguistic and racial group that has influenced world history is the Indo-European, including most of the nations in present-day Europe.

Prophets have come to all these different civilizations and societies to tell them about the existence and oneness of God and His commands. From the written record, however, we see that Indo-European nations have held pagan beliefs since very ancient times. The Greek and Roman civilizations, the barbarian German tribes and the Vikings who lived in northern Europe at around the same time, all held polytheistic pagan beliefs. That explains why those societies were devoid of any moral criteria. They regarded violence and savagery as justified and praiseworthy, and widely engaged in immoral practices such as homosexuality and adultery. (We must never forget that the Roman Empire, widely regarded as the most advanced of the Indo-European civilizations, was a savage society in which human beings were tortured and torn apart in the arenas for public entertainment.)

Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the leaders of the neo-pagan movement in 19thcentury Europe.

These pagan tribes dominating Europe came to believe in one God only under the influence of Jesus (pbuh) who was sent down as a prophet to the Semites and the children of Israel. He himself was racially and linguistically a Jew. His message gradually spread over Europe, and one by one, formerly pagan tribes came to accept Christianity. (We should make it clear that at this point, Christianity had been corrupted, and included in its teachings was the twisted idea of the Trinity).

In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, Christianity weakened throughout Europe. Along with the growing strength of ideologies and philosophies that supported atheism, a peculiar movement was born: Neo-paganism. That movement's leaders maintained that European societies needed to reject Christianity and revert to their ancient pagan beliefs. According to the neo-pagans, the ethical understanding of the pagan European societies was superior to that which emerged later, after they turned to Christianity.

One of the main representatives of that trend, and also one of the principal theoreticians of fascism, was Friedrich Nietzsche. Implacably hostile to Christianity, he believed that this religion had destroyed the warrior spirit of the German race and therefore, its so-called "noble essence." He attacked Christianity in his book The Antichrist and glorified ancient pagan philosophy in Thus Spake Zarathustra. (Zoroastrianism, widespread in ancient Persia, was one of the pagan religions of Indo-European culture).

The neo-pagans also harbored great hatred for Judaism, which they regarded as the basic root of Christianity, which they considered a "Jewish conspiracy" and even described as "the world being conquered by the Jewish idea." (Without question, the neo-pagans also hated Islam, the sole true religion, in much the same way.)

This neo-pagan movement fanned the flames of anti-religious hatred and also gave birth to the ideologies of fascism and anti-Semitism. Examining the foundations of Nazi ideology in particular, it is quite clear that Hitler and his partisans were pagans in the true sense of the word.

The Nazis' devotion to neo-pagan teachings was the main reason for their hostility towards the Jews. Throughout the years of Nazi rule, spectacles reminiscent of ancient pagan ceremonies were staged all over Germany. The opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics, shown here, was one of these.

Nazism: 20th-Century Paganism

In the development of Nazi ideology, one of the most important roles was played by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, a devoted believer in neo-paganism. He was the first to discover the swastika from ancient pagan sources which later became the symbol of the Nazi Party, and to actually use it. The Ordo Novi Templi organization that he established dedicated itself entirely to a rebirth of paganism. Lanz declared that he openly worshipped Wotan, one of the false deities of the old German pagan tribes. Wotanism, in his view, was the German people's natural religion, and the Germans could be saved only by returning to it.

Nazi ideology developed along the lines opened up by Lanz and similar neo-pagan ideologues. Alfred Rosenberg, the foremost of the Nazi ideologues, openly maintained that Christianity couldn't provide spiritual energy for the new Germany being established under Hitler's leadership, which was why the German race needed to return to the old, pagan religion. In Rosenberg's view, when the Nazis came to power, the religious symbols in churches would have to be removed, to be replaced by copies of Hitler's book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), and swastikas and swords representing German invincibility. Hitler was influenced by Rosenberg's views, but didn't put the theory of the new German religion into practice because he feared there would be a huge social protest.1

SS Chief Heinrich Himmler

Even so, a number of neo-pagan measures were put into practice during the Nazi regime. A short while after Hitler came to power, Christian holy days and festivals began to be abolished and replaced by pagan alternatives. During wedding services, vows were taken to imaginary deities such as "Mother Earth" or "Father Sky." In 1935, schools were forbidden to allow students to recite Christian prayers. Then lessons in Christianity were completely banned.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler stated the Nazi regime's hatred of Christianity: "This religion is the most terrible pestilence the world has ever seen. It needs to be treated accordingly."2 These words are expressions indicative of Himmler's and the Nazi mentality's ignorance and irrationality. And they are unacceptable.

The Nazis' enmity for the Jews was thus part and parcel of these anti-religious ideologies. Regarding Christianity as a "Jewish conspiracy," the Nazis tried to divorce German society from Christianity on the one hand, and on the other encouraged Jews to leave Germany by putting various forms of pressure on them and organizing street attacks. (At this point was born the alliance between radical Zionism and Nazism, as shall be discussed in some detail in Chapter 2).

When we examine the various neo-Nazi and fascist groups in the vanguard of anti-Semitism today, we see that almost all possess an anti-religious ideology and employ slogans based on pagan concepts.

The Darwinist Roots of Nazism

Cover of the first edition of Hitler's 1925 book Mein Kampf (My Struggle)

Another revealing point was the way the Nazi worldview took Darwin's theory of evolution as its intellectual basis.

When putting forward his theory, Charles Darwin had claimed that there was a constant fight for survival in nature, and that some races were especially favored in the fight, while others were doomed to lose and be "eliminated." As one might expect, these views soon came to represent the scientific foundation of racism. James Joll, who spent long years as a professor of international history at Oxford, Stanford and Harvard University, describes the ideological link between Darwinism and racism in his book Europe Since 1870: An International History, which is still used as a college textbook:

Charles Darwin, the English naturalist whose books On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, and The Descent of Man, which followed in 1871, launched controversies which affected many branches of European thought… The ideas of Darwin, and of some of his contemporaries such as the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, ... were rapidly applied to questions far removed from the immediate scientific ones… The element of Darwinism which appeared most applicable to the development of society was the belief that the excess of population over the means of support necessitated a constant struggle for survival in which it was the strongest or the "fittest" who won. From this it was easy for some social thinkers to give a moral content to the notion of the fittest, so that the species or races which did survive were those morally entitled to do so.

The doctrine of natural selection could, therefore, very easily become associated with another train of thought developed by the French writer, Count Joseph-Arthur Gobineau, who published an Essay on the Inequality of Human Races in 1853. Gobineau insisted that the most important factor in development was race; and that those races which remained superior were those which kept their racial purity intact. Of these, according to Gobineau, it was the Aryan race which had survived best… Houston Stewart Chamberlain... contributed to carrying some of these ideas a stage further… Hitler himself admired the author [Chamberlain] sufficiently to visit him on his deathbed in 1927.3

Hitler's devotion to the ideas of Darwin appeared in the title of his own book, Mein Kampf. The struggle in question was, of course, the fight for survival proposed by Darwin.

Evaluating people according to their ethnic origins and inherited physical characteristics is a perverse practice that reached its peak in the 19th century. The motivating reason behind it was Darwin's theory of evolution, which regarded mankind from a totally racist perspective. Darwin was the behind-the-scenes architect of 19th-century racism and the 20th century's Nazi barbarity. Above: The so-called "racial measurements" performed according to evolutionist criteria.

Hitler's, and thus the Nazis', ideological devotion to Darwinism was implemented in their policies after coming to power. The Nazis' racial policies, known as "eugenics," represented the theory of evolution as applied to society. Eugenics refers to the weeding out of the sick and handicapped, and the "improvement" of the human race by increasing the number of healthy individuals. According to the theory of eugenics, a race can be improved in the same way that better breeds of animal are formed by the mating of healthy individuals. The theory was proposed by Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton and his son, Leonard Darwin. The first person to adopt and spread the theory in Germany was the evolutionist biologist Ernst Haeckel, a close friend and supporter of Darwin. He recommended that handicapped babies should be killed at birth, to accelerate the so-called evolution of society. He actually went even further, and maintained that lepers, cancer patients and the mentally handicapped should also be ruthlessly killed, or else such people would burden society and slow down the process of evolution.

Haeckel died in 1919, but his ideas were bequeathed to the Nazis. Shortly after seizing power, Hitler embarked on an official program of eugenics. His words in Mein Kampf summed up this new policy:

Mental and physical education are of great importance to the state, yet the selection of people is at least as important. The state has a responsibility to declare that it is inappropriate for genetically or clearly unhealthy individuals to reproduce... It must show no sympathy nor wait for others to understand as it fulfils that responsibility... Preventing the reproduction of physically handicapped or unhealthy individuals for a period of 600 years ... will bring about a hitherto unachievable improvement in human health. If the healthiest members of a race reproduce in a planned manner, the result will be … a race without the deformed physical or mental seeds that we have carried with us so far.4

Biologists who supported the theory of evolution were some of Hitler's main intellectual sources. The origin of his idea of eugenics (racial improvement) lay in Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, and Ernst Haeckel, one of Darwin's strongest supporters in Germany.

As a result of Hitler's philosophy, the Nazis rounded up the mentally ill, the crippled, the congenitally blind and those suffering from inherited diseases and sent them to special "sterilization centers." Under a law passed in 1933, 350,000 mentally ill people, 30,000 gypsies and hundreds of colored children were sterilized by means of castration, x-rays, injections or electric shocks to the genitals. As one Nazi officer put it, "National Socialism is simply applied biology."5

What the Nazis considered "applied biology" was actually Darwin's theory of evolution, itself a violation of the basic laws of biology. It has since been clearly shown that the theory of eugenics and other Darwinist claims are absolutely devoid of any scientific foundation.

Finally, we must emphasize that the Nazis' attachment to evolutionary theory was connected to their hostility to religion as well as to racist policies. As we have already seen, the Nazis bore a great hatred for divine religions. Intending to replace them with pagan beliefs, they sought to carry out anti-religious propaganda and brainwashing and realized that Darwinism was the most effective means of doing so. Daniel Gasman's The Scientific Origins of National Socialism confirms this: "Hitler stressed and singled out the idea of biological evolution as the most foremost weapon against traditional religion…"6

These same anti-religious and Darwinist ideologies underlay the Nazis' despotic ruthlessness.

The Morality of the Qur'an Eliminates Anti-Semitism and All Forms of Racism

From what we have seen so far, the conclusion that emerges is this:

Anti-Semitism is actually an anti-religious and Darwinist ideology, whose roots go back to neo-paganism. For that reason, it is unthinkable for any Muslim to support or feel sympathy for that ideology. An anti-Semite is also an enemy of the prophets Abraham, Moses and David (peace be upon them all), blessed people chosen by God and sent down as messengers to mankind.

The perverted ideology of racism is incompatible with religious moral values, and constantly leads humanity into disaster. Religious morality, on the other hand, commands tolerance, love, compassion and forgiveness—in other words, proper moral values.

In just the same way, other forms of racism (such as prejudice against blacks and other races) are also perversions stemming from various ideologies and false beliefs that have nothing to do with divine religions. Examining anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, it clearly emerges how these advocate ideas and social models diametrically opposed to the morality of the Qur'an. At the root of anti-Semitism, for example, lie feelings of hatred, violence and ruthlessness. (That is why anti-Semites have imitated the pagan religions of ancient barbarian tribes.) An anti-Semite can even go so far as to defend the slaughter of Jews, making no allowance for women, children or the elderly. The morality of the Qur'an, however, teaches love, affection and compassion. It instructs Muslims to be just and forgiving, even to their enemies.

On the other hand, anti-Semites and other racists are unwilling to live in peace with people of different ethnic origins or beliefs. (For instance, the racist Nazi Germans and some Zionists—their Jewish counterparts—opposed the idea of Germans and Jews living in close proximity, because each side believed that would lead to a degeneration of its own people.) The Qur'an, however, encourages people of different beliefs to live together in peace and security within the same social structure, in the same way that it allows no discrimination between races.

The morality God commands in the Qur'an makes no generalized judgments on the grounds of race, nation or religion. Every society has its good and bad members. This applies to the People of the Book too. After explaining that some of the People of the Book rebel against God and religion, the verse goes on to state that among them, there are also the sincerely devout:

They are not all the same. There is a community among the People of the Book who are upright. They recite God's signs throughout the night, and they prostrate. They believe in God and the Last Day, and enjoin the right and forbid the wrong, and compete in doing good. They are among the righteous. They will not be denied the reward for any good thing they do. God knows those who guard against evil. (Qur'an, 3:113-115)

No matter whom it is inflicted upon, racism is a terrible crime. The Nazis went down in history as an example of the ruthless dimensions that racist barbarity can assume. This guiltless Jewish child crawling on the ground in the Warsaw ghetto in the 1940s and the many innocent people of different races oppressed all over the world reveal the cruel nature of racism.

The Qur'an commands to make no distinction, not even against those who do not believe and refuse to recognize God and religion, and states that those who display no hostility to religion should be treated well:

God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in the religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them. God loves those who are just. God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in the religion and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion. Any who take them as friends are wrongdoers. (Qur'an, 60:8-9)

It is commanded that even the enemies of Muslims should enjoy their sense of justice :

You who believe! Show integrity for the sake of God, bearing witness with justice. Do not let hatred for a people incite you into not being just. Be just. That is closer to heedfulness. Have fear [and respect] of God. God is aware of what you do.(Qur'an, 5:8)

Once again, all these verses show that it is totally incompatible with Islamic morality to harbor hatred, anger, or aggression towards Jews or any other people, solely on account of their beliefs and race. Since the Jews are descended from the line of Abraham (pbuh), there is absolutely no question of Islamic morality ever permitting any attempt at the elimination of Abraham's (pbuh) line. This is a most repellent and sinful course of action. Like all Muslims who abide by Qur'anic moral values and the Sunnah, the teachings of our Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace), it is impossible for us to accept such a repugnant action or regard it as in any way justified.

Conclusion

As we have seen, the morality of the Qur'an eliminates all forms of racism. Therefore a Muslim who abides by the Qur'an can never engage in racism, and never despise others because they belong to a particular race.

The Qur'an commands that other religions be treated in a very moderate and friendly manner, as long as they do not behave in a manner hostile to Muslims and Islam. That is why a Muslim who abides by the Qur'an must behave in a kind and friendly manner to members of other religions, particularly the People of the Book.

Racist ideologies like Nazism and anti-Semitic philosophies, whose roots go back ancient pagan cultures, are perverted teachings that have absolutely no place in religion. For any Muslim to give such teachings any respect at all is of course out of the question.

Our perspective on the subjects of Judaism and Holocaust depends on those fundamental criteria.

Indeed, this book has been prepared in strict accordance with those criteria. The following chapters unreservedly criticize the Nazis' oppression of the German Jews, but they also explain how the view shared by Nazis and some racist Zionists that "different races must not intermix" is completely wrong, and defend the concept of different races, ethnic origins and beliefs living together.

Our wish is to see racist, anti-Semitic movements like Nazism, and ideologies that engage in racism in the name of any ethnic group, such as radical Zionism, all disappear, making way for the establishment of a world order based on justice, in which all races and beliefs can live in peace.

A Brief Statement Regarding Zionism

Around the middle of the 19th century, Zionism emerged as a movement maintaining that the scattered Jewish people should have a homeland all their own. Like many ideologies, however, Zionism became corrupted over the course of time. Its justified demand turned into a radical conception that in practice resorted to violence and terror, and aligned itself with extremist forces. Radical Zionism is a racist, chauvinistic and expansionist ideology, inspired by such movements as Social Darwinism, all of which are incompatible with religious moral values.

This book does not criticize patriotic Jews' justified behavior and demands, but rather the mindset and practices of certain radical and racist Zionists. Indeed, the radicals in question and some Zionists who allied themselves with the Nazis failed to see the perilous consequences to which such cooperation might lead. In the present day, moreover, many pro-peace Israeli citizens, devout Jews, and considerable numbers of Jews in other countries of the world (even moderate Zionists) oppose radical Zionism, and fiercely condemn racist assertions from that ideology that are incompatible with religious moral values.

In contrast to the propaganda disseminated in the early days, certain circles transformed Zionism into a movement that supported violence and threatened peace and security. Historical experience proved that radical Zionism led to Jews, as well as Arabs, suffering serious losses. History shows that so long as radical Zionist ideology is not renounced, the Jews—and therefore their neighbors and the entire region—can never enjoy peace. To avoid any repetition of painful experiences from the past; to attain a lasting peace in the Middle East; and for Jews and Arabs to live in peace and security in their own lands will be possible only if both sides abandon all forms of radical tendencies and turn towards true religious moral values. Our hope is that the facts set out in this book will encourage a major step in that direction.

Chapter One
The Untold Story of The Nazi-Radical Zionist Collaboration

At the beginning of 1935, a passenger ship set sail from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Haifa in Palestine. The ship's name—Tel Aviv—was painted in Hebrew letters on the starboard bow. Yet the flag fluttering over the vessel bore the Nazi swastika. There was a similar paradox regarding the ship's owners and its crew. The Tel Aviv's owner was a German Jew, and a leading figure of Zionist movement in German lands. The captain, however, was a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party).

Decades later, one of the passengers on that voyage would interpret the situation as a "metaphysical absurdity." Yet the Nazi-radical Zionist collaboration symbolized by the Tel Aviv was no contradiction. On the contrary, the ship was just one small example of a reality that writers of the official history have taken great pains to conceal from us.

What rationale lay behind this unusual alliance, at first glance so difficult to believe? For an answer to this question, we must journey back into history.

From Diaspora to Zionism

Anti-clerical movements gained strength with the Reformation that began in the late Middle Ages. Luther (right) and Calvin (left) were the Protestant movement's most important religious leaders. One of the main features of reformist religious figures was their close relations with certain Jews.

One of history's oldest peoples, the Jews, had lived in and around Palestine for centuries. In 70 AD, Roman armies captured Palestine and Jerusalem, where they destroyed the Temple and banished most of the Jews from Palestine. With that date begins the period of the Diaspora—or dispersion of the Jews—which would last for many centuries. The Jews scattered throughout the known world. A great number settled in Europe, eventually concentrating in Spain and eastern Europe, but for the most part, failed to assimilate into the populations among which they lived.

There were two reasons for this. The first was that some of them considered themselves superior to the goyim, or non-Jewish gentiles, based on their conviction later inserted in the Old Testament that they were "the chosen people." Considering themselves as an elect, these Jews thought it unacceptable, indeed humiliating, to intermarry or even mix with "lesser" peoples. A second, scarcely less important reason was the way they were viewed by the societies in which they lived. Europeans, in particular, were not on friendly terms with the Jews. During the Middle Ages, Christians harbored a deep aversion toward the Jews. Catholic Europe didn't like the Jews, nor did the Jews like Catholic Europe.

These circumstances prodded the Jews to assume a distinct social status. They were unhappy with the established order, but more importantly, possessed the power to change that order. In particular, their power lay in money. Usury, or lending money at interest, was the most important profession for most Jews during the Middle Ages, up through modern times. The Church had forbidden its members to lend money at interest, which was sinful according to Christian doctrine. But in Judaism, lending money at interest to non-Jews was not prohibited; it was even one of the significant aspects of Judaism. During the Middle Ages, therefore, European Jews became identified with usury. Through this profession, passed on from father to son, they were able to accumulate large fortunes. By the end of the Middle Ages, Jewish usurers were lending money at interest to princes and even to kings.

Certain Jews used the economic power they thus acquired to undermine the established order in Europe. They supported opposition to the Church, beginning late in the Middle Ages and reached its peak during the Protestant Reformation. One example of this is the friendly relationship that existed between some Jews and such theologians as Jan Huss, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli, who formulated doctrines against the Catholic Church. In reaction, the Catholic Church identified them as "half-Jews" or "crypto-Jews."

The Protestant Reformation weakened the Catholic Church and, especially in northern Europe, let the Jews acquire certain rights and privileges. But for some Jews, who saw themselves a chosen people and superior to all others, this was not enough. They possessed economic power, but lacked political power, which was shared among the Church, the kings, and the nobles. Certain Jews were beginning to enter the bourgeoisie, a new social class distinct from Church, royalty, or aristocracy. In the 18th and 19th centuries, some Jewish bankers became the most important economic force in Europe. During the 19th century, the power of the Rothschild dynasty in particular became legendary, and the Rothschilds came to be regarded as Europe's lords of high finance.

The bourgeoisie, in which Jews played such leading roles, acquired political power through the French Revolution and the reforms and changes that followed it. The leaders of the Enlightenment, which had paved the way for the French Revolution, objected to religion's guiding role in civil life and championed democracy over monarchy. The ensuing developments allowed Jews to enjoy exactly the same rights as Christians; and in the years following the French Revolution, Jews all across Europe began to achieve civil equality. Most European countries eventually abolished legal and social limitations on Jews, as they should have. Jews could now share the same rights, rise in the ranks of government, and acquire political power. The first Jew to enter the British House of Lords was a Rothschild banker. Not long afterward, Benjamin Disraeli became Great Britain's first Jewish prime minister. Meanwhile, popular prejudices and antipathies against the Jews were decreasing in Europe, as Christianity's influence on society diminished. Throughout the countries of northern Europe, and in England especially, traditional anti-Semitism was being replaced by a trend that regarded the Jews sympathetically and defended their rights.

The first and foremost of these rights was the dream that Jews had held over the centuries: to return to Canaan, now Palestine. Ever since their expulsion in 70 AD, the Jews maintained their emotional attachment to that land. Throughout the long centuries they had dwelt in Europe, they saw themselves as living on foreign soil, and envisioned a future return to their "homeland." Always during the rites of the Jewish New Year was expressed the fervent hope "Next year in Jerusalem." Since most of the Jews considered themselves "chosen people," they have long aspired to live in no ordinary land, but rather in the land God promised to the Children of Israel, according to the Old Testament.

The Jews' spiritual attachment to the lands of their forefathers and their desire to live on those lands are exceedingly justified. What is wrong is to expel from their homes people who have lived in those same lands for centuries, to inflict suffering on them, and to use force and violence against them for the sake of this demand. Palestine is sufficiently extensive for Muslims and Jews to be able to live together. Indeed, Muslims and Jews and Christians all lived together in peace and security for 400 years under Ottoman rule, and were free to fulfill their religious obligations however they wished. Ideologies incompatible with religious moral values subsequently began to influence the region, damaging that peace and security. Once people begin to live by true religious moral values, then it will be possible to rebuild the permanent peace so fervently desired for the last half century.

The Emergence of Political Zionism

With its support for Zionism, the Balfour Declaration— published by Arthur James Balfour, British foreign minister of the day—laid the groundwork for the foundation of a Jewish state in the Middle East.
Right: Arthur James Balfour, and the Declaration he published.

For centuries, the Jews had anticipated that returning to Palestine would be possible only with the help of a savior, known as the Messiah. In the middle of the 19th century, however, two rabbis formulated a novel interpretation of this doctrine. Realizing that the Jews had acquired political power and that Europe was ready to help them, Rabbi Judah Alkalay and Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Kalisher claimed that there was no longer any need to await the Messiah, because the Jews could return to Palestine through their own economic and political clout, with the help of the great European powers. This would be the first step toward the coming of the Messiah.

This rabbinical interpretation influenced young Jewish nationalists who weren't particularly religious, yet still felt Jewish based on racial consciousness. Without question, the most famous of these was a young Austrian journalist named Theodor Herzl. By transforming the two rabbis' proposition into an active political movement, Herzl founded political Zionism, which derived its name from the sacred Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Its aim was the return of world Jewry to Palestine as a result of a lengthy program. Herzl presided at the first Zionist congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1898, which established the World Zionist Organization. This organization would direct the movement with patience and persistence until the establishment of Israel.

Zionism emerged and developed under the influence of the nationalist movements of the time. To achieve their aims, however, some Zionists adopted means that, as we shall be seeing in due course, included elements that no person of good conscience could possibly accept, and would even be rejected by many Zionists themselves.

The WZO had two main goals: to make Palestine fit for Jewish settlement and to induce all Jews, beginning with those in Europe, to immigrate to Palestine. In 1917, considerable progress was made toward the first aim. By issuing the Balfour Declaration, the British government gave notice of its support for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which had been captured from the Ottoman Empire during the World War I. For the Zionists, this was a great victory to have the public support of England, the world's greatest military and political power. The Balfour Declaration demonstrated to many, including numerous Jews who had regarded Zionism as a mere dream, just how powerful the movement really was.

The movement's second goal, the return of Jewry from the Diaspora, was much less successful, and this created a big problem for the Zionists. Despite many appeals from the WZO, the Jews of the Diaspora—especially those in Europe, whom the Zionists valued most—turned their backs on the planned return to Palestine.

The reason for their rejection was not simple indifference, and the solution for it would not be simple either.

Assimilation: A Problem for Zionism

David Ben Gurion, first prime minister of the State of Israel, declaring Israel's independence on 14 May, 1948

European Jewry rejected the Zionists' call for return to Palestine because for nearly a century, they had been involved in the assimilation process.

Assimilation was the inevitable result of gaining equality with Christians. During the Middle Ages, as noted earlier, Jews had been like second-class citizens with the restrictions imposed on them. The Jewish leaders thought that if these restrictions could be abolished, they could acquire political power, prove that they were superior, and return to Palestine. Therefore, they had worked to demolish the Catholicism's control over Europe, and had played a major role in the collapse of the traditional Church-monarchy order and its replacement by modernity.

Modernity, however, had an influence they could not have foreseen. With European society's abolition of some of the restrictions on the Jews, the basis of Jewish cohesion, as well as the key to Jewish resistance to assimilation, was also disappearing. At this point Jews began to become part of the European societies in which they lived. Even as the Jews gained equal rights with Christians, they were losing their Jewish identities. By the end of the 19th century, the majority of Jews in the Germany, France and England started to consider themselves Germans, Frenchmen, or British subjects of the Jewish faith, no longer as a separate nation.

Some Zionists, on the other hand, held quite different notions. According to them, being a Jew was not simply a matter of religion, but of race. The Jewish race was Semitic, totally different from the Europeans; and therefore assimilation was unacceptable. In their view, calling one's self a "Jewish German" or a "Jewish Frenchman" was nonsensical. European or not, Jews were distinct from any other race, regardless of whether they had Mosaic beliefs or were atheists (of which there were many within some Zionist groups). Therefore it was pathological for Jews to intermingle and assimilate with other races. They should have a state of their own, and it had to be in Palestine, their traditional homeland.

In short, these certain Zionists viewed assimilated Jews as sick people who needed help. Such Jews, intoxicated with the comforts of modernity, imagining they were no different from other people dwelling in Europe, had to be cured as soon as possible; or else the founding of a Jewish state would have to remain a dream.

But how to "cure" these Jews? It soon became evident that the task was difficult, for assimilationist Jews reacted sharply against the racist Zionists. Most of the assimilationist Jewish organizations issued proclamations sternly rebuffing these Zionists' claims. They declared that their communities were only religious in nature, that the Jews were loyal citizens of the countries in which they resided, and finally, that they had no intention of returning to the deserts of Palestine. While Theodor Herzl directed Zionist propaganda in Europe, a conference held in Pittsburgh, in the United States, issued a declaration called "Eight Principles of Reform Judaism." Assimilationist Americans put the world on notice that they regarded themselves as adherents of a religion, not members of a separate nation. Therefore, they had no intention either of returning to Jerusalem, or of re-establishing the sacrificial religion of the Children of Aaron. They did not support any new Jewish state.7

After similar declarations followed, the radical Zionists understood that they wouldn't be able to win over assimilationist Jews by words alone. Yet how could they prove that the Jews were in fact different from all other races, and were indeed aliens in Europe? Before the modern era, the problem solved itself. Europeans were hostile to the Jews and, by imposing restrictions on them, helped preserve the Jewish identity in a circuitous way. European societies had traditionally opposed assimilation with the Jews, and thus had prevented it. But now, it had become difficult to devise any restrictions, or to stir up antipathy against the Jews.

Nevertheless, another option might be found: an ideology to stop assimilation.

Nineteenth-Century Racism and Modern Anti-Semitism

Some Zionists discovered something very useful to them: A twisted ideology that firmly opposed the assimilation of the Jews was growing stronger in Europe. This was modern racism, reinforced by Darwin's theory of evolution. During the 19th century, racist theoreticians flourished all across Europe. Attaching utmost importance to the fact that humanity is made up of different races, these people, presumed that human being's most important characteristic was his race. They made the false claim that a race could run no greater risk than losing its "purity" through mixture with other races.

The Dreyfus affair in 1894 is an important example of the anti-Semitism growing in Europe. Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer accused of treason and leaking information to the German military attaché, was convicted, despite much evidence in favor of his innocence, simply because he was a Jew.

At the same time, racial theorists—primarily in Germany, but in many other countries as well—expounded anti-Semitic theories. Pointing to the differences between the Aryan and Semitic races, they claimed that the Jews were defiling the purity of their own race by living among Europeans. According to such people, the Jews had to be isolated, and miscegenation with them prevented. Fanatical hatred of the Jews based on the call for racial isolation is known as modern anti-Semitism—so-called "modern" because it opposed the Jews because of their race, not their religion, as was the case in the Middle Ages. Anti-Semitism, rising together with the fortunes Jews amassed, reached a peak with the infamous Dreyfus Case.

Interestingly, not only European racists felt uncomfortable about the assimilation of the Jews. Another group that felt threatened—on behalf of the "Jewish race"—were certain Zionists who considered Jewry not as a religion, but merely as a national identity. Ironically, one side wanted to prevent the Jews mixing into their race, while the other wanted to keep its own Jewish race separate from all others to protect its so-called "Jewish identity."

The goal they wanted was actually the same. Why, then, shouldn't they work together?

The first forthright response to this question came from Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism.

Anti-Semitism: Herzl's Card

The unstoppable progress of Jewish assimilation (and Jewish resistance to the insistent Zionist calls) prodded some Zionists toward collaboration with anti-Semites. The man who brought this about was Theodor Herzl, the movement's first leader, who understood perfectly that to compel Jews to abandon their present homes for Israel, anti-Semitism was a necessity. Any plan to convince the Jews to emigrate had to be based on this foundation.

A photograph, on exhibit in Jerusalem, showing Jews slaughtered at Kichinev in 1903

Meanwhile, anti-Semitism, rising in tandem with 19th-century racism, had already extinguished the hopes of many Jews who had thought that they could live in Europe free from any restrictions. Herzl pronounced anti-Semitism to be incurable, and for Jews, the only salvation was to establish a state in Palestine. Herzl's thesis that Jews and gentiles could not live together in harmony was quite compatible with the position of anti-Semitic racists. Remarking on this significant parallel, Herzl declared that anti-Semitism could be of great help to their campaign.

He said that all anti-Semites were their closest friends, because this would thus facilitate migration. On 9 June, 1895, he made the following entry in his diary: "First I shall negotiate with the Tsar regarding permission for the Russian Jews to leave the country... Then I shall negotiate with the German Kaiser, then with Austria, then with France regarding the Algerian Jews, then as need dictates."8

Herzl was not content to entice the Jews to emigrate with diplomatically-phrased entreaties. As the well-known French intellectual Roger Garaudy wrote, inThe Case of Israel: A Study of Political Zionism, Herzl advocated the separation of the Jews not to establish a separate religion or culture, but a state. To achieve that end, he had no qualms about telling everyone he spoke to about the danger represented by the Jews and to describe the need for them to leave at once. Herzl always employed the same extreme language with German Foreign Minister von Blow and Guillaume II, Russia's Minister of the Interior Plehve and Czar Nicholas II, and leading anti-Semites.

The cruelest of these was Plehve, responsible for one of the most terrible massacres against Jews in Kichinev in April 1903. In a letter to Plehve in May, Herzl suggested that Zionism was a preventive antidote to revolution. Plehve responded to his letter in August, requesting a letter from Herzl to the effect that the Zionist movement supported him. Herzl wrote Plehve, promising that a Zionist movement that would ensure the migration of Jews would be supported.9

The photograph to the side shows Stalin and Trotsky, two of the most important figures in the Bolshevik Revolution, addressing the crowds in Red Square. Below left: One of the many propaganda posters used during the Revolution.

Herzl promised Plehve that he would win over those Jews playing a major role in the Bolshevik revolutionary movement against the Tsar, thus averting rebellion, in exchange for help in sending Jews back to Palestine. Herzl's plan to collaborate with anti-Semites would be the method most favored by some subsequent Jewish leaders.

Eventually, Herzl became a most fervent supporter of anti-Semitic movements. Roger Garaudy writes that before the publication of his book in 1895, one of Herzl's critics said, "You have done immeasurable harm to the Jews." Herzl had no reservations about the following reply: "I deserve to be the greatest of all the enemies of the Jews… The enemies of the Jews will be our greatest friends … Countries hostile to the Jews will be among our closest allies…"

Theodor Herzl was very aware that to convince Jews to flee their countries for Israel, political Zionism needed the concept of "enmity towards the Jews." In due course, we shall see how some proponents of political Zionism have maintained Herzl's idea, unchanged, right up to the present day.

Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, stated that reinforcing anti-Semitism was the only way to save the Jews from assimilation and to convince them to emigrate to Palestine.

This behavior is to reinforce the claims of torture in order to portray the Jews as foreign to the people in the countries in which they lived, and thus nourish the idea of "enmity towards the Jews" in a way it needed most, and to accelerate migration. Here lies the motive for Herzl's efforts to strengthen hatred of Jews rather than fearing its expansion. In addition, there was no end to the warnings issued to him. Baron Johann von Chlumetzky, a prominent member of the Austrian Parliament, wrote to Herzl:

You will be successful in this, if the goal of your tendencies and propaganda is to incite anti-Semitism. As a result of such propaganda, I am totally convinced that anti-Semitism will become an avalanche, and that you will lead your race towards slaughter.10

Herzl and some other Zionists agreed on this common goal with anti-Semitic racists, believing that this was the only way to transfer all Jews to Palestine. For those who wanted to protect the "purity" of their own race from mixing with Jews, this was a perfect solution. Theodor Fritsch, publisher of the famous anti-Semitic magazine, Antisemitische Correspondenz (later called Deutsch-Soziale Blätter), hailed the First Zionist Congress and sent his best wishes for the implementation of a plan requiring that the Jews leave Germany as soon as possible to settle in Palestine.

Herzl believed that it would harm Zionism if the Jews felt comfortable remaining in the countries where they lived, stating—as quoted by Garaudy: "But they do become assimilated by any society if they find themselves secure in it for a long period. And that will never be to our interest." Therefore, according to some Zionist leaders, the first step was to provoke enmity against the Jews in these countries. They would be kept under psychological tension, and made uneasy with provocative attacks. By such measures, these Zionist leaders hoped to convince the Jews that they were in peril in the Diaspora and that they could be saved only by emigrating to the Holy Land.

Herzl tried to provoke anti-Semitism in another surprising manner, by adding passages to his diary that would lead anti-Semites to believe in the existence of a "Jewish conspiracy" and thus incite them against the Jews. Three volumes of Herzl's diaries were published in Germany in 1922 and 1923. Joseph Samuel Bloch, the Austrian writer and publisher of the newspaper Österreichische Wochenschrift, and who knew Herzl intimately, writes that the letters to Rothschild and to Baron Hirsch in these diaries, and the assertion that the Jews were potential rebels and revolutionaries in the countries where they resided, were enough to bring destruction on the Jewish people. Bloch goes on to state that Herzl has provided the enemies of the Jews with the basis for a solution of the Jewish problem, and shown them the path to follow in their future work. To this end, the diaries were a terrible document.11

Herzl strove to arouse anti-Semitism and to form alliances with the anti-Semites until his sudden death in 1904. But his efforts did not result in much success: Most European Jews declined to immigrate to the Holy Land.

Jewish Resistance to Radical Zionism

The World Zionist Organization, founded by Herzl and which had continued to grow after his death, had as its chief goal the resettlement of Jews to Palestine. Despite the WZO's efforts, however, immigrants to Palestine continued to be fewer than expected. Indeed, after 1925, immigration began to decrease abruptly. Some immigrants even returned to their countries of origin. Between 1926 and 1931, approximately 3,200 Jews left Palestine annually. By 1932, there were only 181,000 Jews, in Palestine, as opposed to 770,000 Arabs. The Zionist leaders were well aware that with such a small Jewish minority, they could not establish a state.

In Germany, France, and the United States in particular, the Jews had grown prosperous and were loath to abandon their high standard of living for life in Palestine.

Jews in many European countries were forced to live in ghettos. The photograph shows Jews being forced to leave a ghetto in Poland.

Many well-known Jews of the period, such as physicist Albert Einstein, the philosopher Martin Buber, and Professor Judah Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, vigorously opposed the racist Zionism's calls for emigration. The Jewish masses were no less adamant in rejecting the calls of some Zionist leaders. Except for a small minority, the Jews of Russia rejected racist Zionism. Indeed, some returned to Russia after living conditions in Palestine turned out to be less than they expected.

During the 1920s, the Zionist leadership believed that the Balfour Declaration, which had opened the way to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, would accelerate the immigration process. They were in for a grave disappointment. While the Jewish population of Palestine doubled, reaching 160,000 in the 1920s, the number of immigrants was only about 100,000. Of that number, seventy-five percent did not remain in Palestine. In other words, the total number of immigrants was about 8,000 annually. In 1927 only 2,710 Jewish immigrants arrived, but 5,000 Jews left. In 1929, the number of Jews who arrived and departed was roughly the same.

This decline was an ominous fiasco for the radical Zionists, seeking as they did to bring the greatest number of Jews to Palestine in the shortest time, even if that required force. Despite the WZO's intense propaganda, immigration to the Holy Land remained weak. At the end of the nineteenth century, the number of Jews living in Palestine had been less than 50,000—only seven percent of the population. Even in 1919, two years after the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish population did not exceed 65,000. During the twelve years between 1920 and 1932, only 118,378 Jews—not even one percent of the world Jewish population—were settled in Palestine by one means or another.

It was obvious that this policy wasn't working. One or two anti-Semitic movements hadn't been enough to convince those unwilling Jews to emigrate. Therefore, some radical Zionist leaders decided to more effectively use the method pioneered by Herzl. They needed to make Jews, especially those "elite" European Jews considered necessary for the envisioned state of Israel, feel more uncomfortable. In other words, anti-Semitism had to grow more powerful.

The Ideological Kinship of Nazism and Radical Zionism

The call for immigration to Palestine, repeated over and over by the World Zionist Organization, was answered by only a very few number of Jews. An important number of European Jews was already involved in the assimilation process and did not want to abandon their comfortable homes for an ambiguous adventure. Those who answered this call were idealist Jews with very strong religious or national beliefs. Above: Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the WZO, with a group of young and idealist Jewish immigrants about to leave for Palestine.

Herzl's concept of forging an alliance with anti-Semites in order to halt, then reverse, the assimilation of Jews was put into practice by some of his Zionist successors, in concert with racists in Europe and around the world. The most important of these were German racists, the forerunners of the Nazi movement. Due to their political power as well as their ideological rigidity, they were exactly the type of ally the radical Zionists were looking for. In fact, the ideological parallels between the two were striking.

Lenni Brenner, an American historian who characterizes himself as an anti-Zionist Jew, reveals the unknown history of their alliance in his book Zionism in the Age of Dictators. As Brenner has emphasized, the ties between these Zionists in question and the anti-Semitic racists were forged in the early years of the Zionist movement. For instance, Max Nordau, Herzl's partner in the Zionist movement, granted an interview to Edouard Drumont, the famous French anti-Semite, on December 21, 1903. The conversation between the Jewish racist and the French chauvinist was published in Drumont's anti-Semitic newspaper, La Libre Parole, including Nordau's statement that Zionism was not a question of religion but exclusively of race, and that on this point, there was no one with whom he was in greater agreement than M. Drumont.

An important theme in Brenner's book is the ideological similarity between the German racists and the radical Zionists. The blood-and-soil fetishism that was rapidly spreading among the German intelligentsia before the World War I was absolutely mirrored in racist Zionist positions. According to this ideology, the German race had its own blood (Blut), and had to live on its own soil (Boden). Jews, being not of German blood, could never be a part of the German Volk or have the right to dwell on German soil. As Brenner emphasizes, racist Zionists quite genuinely supported all the arguments of the Blut und Boden racists. In the radical Zionists' opinion, too, Jews were not a part of the German people and therefore, should not mix with the German blood. Best for the Jews was to return to their own soil: Palestine.

There is no question that by sharing the German racists' theories, these Zionists approved of anti-Semitism. Because Jews were not of the German people, German racists had the right to isolate and expel them, too. According to the radical Zionists' position, Jews themselves were to blame for anti-Semitism, by insisting on living in foreign lands and trying to mix with alien races. It was the assimilated Jews, not the anti-Semites, who were at fault. Chaim Greenberg, the radical Zionist editor of the Zionist organ Jewish Frontier, would characterize this mentality as follows: "To be a good Zionist one must be somewhat of an anti-Semite."12

As Brenner states:

If one believes in the validity of racial exclusiveness, it is difficult to object to anyone else's racism. If one believes further that it is impossible for any people to be healthy except in their own homeland, then one cannot object to anyone else excluding "aliens" from their territory.13

Francis R. Nicosia, a professor of history at St. Michael's College (Vermont), also stresses the ideological relationship between radical Zionists and Nazis in his book The Third Reich and the Palestine Question. According to Nicosia, the radical Zionists were ideologically close not only to the Nazis, but also to their nineteenth century racist predecessors, including Arthur de Gobineau. In 1902, Die Welt, a Zionist newspaper published by the WZO, endorsed Gobineau's theories on racial degeneration and on the desirability of maintaining racial purity, noting that Gobineau had admired the Jews' racial purity. In the years prior to the World War I, some influential Zionists zealously defended the theories of racist philosophers such as Elias Auerbach, Ignaz Zollschan, Arthur Gobineau, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.14

Nicosia also emphasizes the anti-Semites' sympathy for Zionism. Anti-Semites were advocating the transfer of European Jewry to Palestine as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, even before political Zionism existed in active form. Among their number was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a racist philosopher and forerunner of fascism. Fichte, an advocate of the expulsion of the Jews and other minorities in order to safeguard and honor the GermanVolksgeist (national spirit), considered granting the Jews equal social rights as Germans would be a disaster. He suggested that the "Jewish question" might be solved only by removing all Jews to Palestine. Fichte's theories would be embraced completely by such successors as Eugen Dühring.15 

The German anti-Semites' sympathy for Zionism continued after World War I, during the years of the Weimar Republic. Nicosia relates that during those years, such prominent anti-Semites as Wilhelm Stapel, Hans Blüher, Max Wundt, and Johann Peperkorn looked on Zionism as the best solution to the Jewish problem.

One point needs to be clarified. There is nothing extraordinary about Zionism, viewed strictly as a movement that supported and helped Jews who wanted to emigrate to Palestine. It may be quite normal supporting a group setting out with such an aim. However, the cooperation between anti-Semites and radical Zionists includes very dangerous plans and objectives. First of all, both groups share the common element of racism, which is incompatible with religious moral values. The two groups supported one another in the light of their racist aims, and had no compunction about resorting to violence when necessary in order to achieve their own ends. The worst victims of the extremist groups supported by radical Zionists were members of their own race. Racist Zionists generally turned a blind eye to this unjust treatment, and, as will be considered in later chapters, even became a source of mistreatment themselves.

Radical Zionist Collaboration with Nazism

On first hearing, one would probably regard the link between Zionism and German anti-Semitism as a contradiction in terms. Yet in 1925, Jacob Klatzkin, one of these Zionists, expounded as follows:

If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism, we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right, therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity … Instead of establishing societies for defense against the anti-Semites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights.16

In some circles of the World Zionist Organization, the core of the Zionist movement, radical Zionist sympathy for anti-Semitism was quite widespread. Chaim Weizmann, WZO's second leader after Herzl and later the first president of Israel, frequently expressed his understanding for anti-Semitism. As Brenner writes:

As early as 18 March 1912 he had actually been brazen enough to tell a Berlin audience that "each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews." In his chat with Balfour [the British foreign affairs minister], in 1914, he went further, telling him that "we too are in agreement with the cultural anti-Semites, in so far as we believed that Germans of the Mosaic faith are an undesirable, demoralizing phenomena [sic]."17

Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the World Zionist Organization, and Lord Arthur James Balfour, British Foreign Secretary

This mentality dominating some sections of the WZO was also shared by some others at its German branch, the Zionist Federation of Germany (Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland, or ZVfD), one of the two main Jewish organizations in Germany. The Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith (Centralverein, or CV) was the other main organization established by the assimilationist Jews. Naturally, the ZVfD and the CV disagreed on a variety of issues. For example, one was deeply convinced that being a Jew was a matter of race, while the other group regarded Jews as only a religious community.

Of course, the major area of dispute was anti-Semitism. For the assimilationists in the CV, anti-Semitism was the main threat. They did everything they could to kill this "virus" that threatened their contented lives in Germany. But some Zionists who considered assimilationism the real virus were very pleased with the rise of anti-Semitism, let alone worrying about it. Kurt Blumenfeld, president and former general secretary of the ZVfD, was one Jewish fan of anti-Semitism. Brenner writes that Blumenfeld completely bought the anti-Semitic line that Germany belonged to the Aryan race and that for a Jew to hold office in the land of his birth was an intrusion into the affairs of another Volk.18

From the early 1920s, German anti-Semitism was embodied by the Nazis, who by then had become a force across Germany. In 1923, Hitler and his uneducated, aggressive, psychologically unbalanced, racist, sadist and despotic men marched to attempt the Beer Hall Putsch (revolt). Such men, organized for street fighting into the SA (Sturmabteilung, or storm troops), began to take their political rivals as targets.

The collaboration between the two sides started at the time the Nazi movement emerged. Radical Zionists paid continual court to the Nazis, no less than to the other anti-Semites. Hitler sent calculated messages to the radical Zionists as well. As Nicosia stresses, Hitler's speeches in the early 1920s claimed that the only possible solution to the Jewish question was the deportation of all Jews from Germany. Hitler's ideas were quite different from those of the ignorant, rowdy anti-Semites who knew only how to organize pogroms. On April 6, 1920 in Munich, Hitler stated that National Socialism should concentrate on completely removing Jews from Germany, rather than cultivating a pogrom atmosphere against the Jewish community. He argued, moreover, that every means to this end would be justified, "even if we must cooperate with the devil himself"—a reference to the racist Zionists. On April 29, Hitler concluded, "We will carry on our struggle until the last Jew is removed from the German Reich."19 In his well-known letter of September 16, 1919, he wrote:

Anti-Semitism, based purely on emotion, will always manifest itself in the form of pogroms. However, a rational anti-Semitism must lead to a well-planned, legal struggle against and elimination of the special rights of the Jew that he, unlike other aliens who live among us, possesses. Its ends must be irrevocably the complete removal of the Jews.20

The removal that Hitler advocated was endorsed by Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazis' leading ideologist, who became the chief advocate of collaborating with the radical Zionists to achieve Nazi goals. In Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten (The Spoor of the Jew down the Ages), published in 1919, Rosenberg concluded that "Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations."21 As Brenner shows, Rosenberg's argument that the radical Zionist movement could be exploited to promote the segregation of the Jews in Germany, as well as their emigration to Palestine, was eventually transformed into policy by the Hitler regime. 22

In 1933 the Nazi movement came to power, taking advantage of the economic depression that began in 1929, the weakness of the Weimar Republic, and the socio-psychological state of the German people. The Nazi victory pleased some Zionists no less than if they themselves had come to power.

Early Years of the Nazis, and the Radical Zionists

As early as 1920, the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg had mentioned the necessity of collaborating with radical Zionists to deport the Jews from Germany.

At the time of the Nazis' ascendancy, German Jews made up 0.9 percent of the German population, but their economic importance was considerable. Most Jews had high standards of living; sixty percent were either businessmen or professionals. Others were tradesmen, theologians, students; only some were workers. Although few in numbers, they were Germany's most significant racial minority. "Purifying" the German race by driving out these Jews was one of the Nazis' major objectives. Racial purity was so important to the Nazis that Hitler would even attempt to fill "reproduction farms" with young German men and women with "ideal" features to create a new, superior Aryan generation. Keeping the race pure required also that the Jews first be isolated, and then be pushed out of the country.

Such was the radical Zionists' dream as well, which was why interesting ties developed between the two sides, in the days when the Nazi movement was on the brink of gaining power. Of these relationships, one of the most significant grew up between Kurt Tuchler, a member of the ZVfD executive board, and Baron Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein of the SS. Tuchler explained to Mildenstein how radical Zionism paralleled the Nazi movement and persuaded him to write a pro-radical Zionist piece for the Nazi press. The baron also agreed to visit Palestine with Tuchler, and two months after Hitler came to power, the two men and their wives traveled to Palestine. Von Mildenstein stayed there for six months before returning to write his articles praising radical Zionism.23 From the initial days of the Nazi government, there were also official contacts between radical Zionists and Nazis. In March 1933, Hermann Göring summoned the leaders of the major Jewish organizations.

At that time, one important evidence of the Nazis' radical Zionist view was a memorandum that the ZVfD sent to the Nazi Party on June 21, 1933. This document, not published until 1962, was an open request from radical and racist Zionists for collaboration with the Nazis. Some interesting passages from this long memorandum follow:

… On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible … Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities … we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group … Thus, a self-conscious Jewry here described, in whose name we speak, can find a place in the structure of the German state … We believe in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious Jewry and the German state … For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews …24

Of this memorandum, Brenner writes:

This document, a treason to the Jews of Germany, was written in standard Zionist clichés … In it the German Zionists offered calculated collaboration between Zionism and Nazism, hallowed by the goal of a Jewish state: We shall wage no battle against thee, only against those that would resist thee.25

Years later, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, one of the radical Zionist authors of the memorandum, explained the motive for it:

The Nazi ideology, which dictated that the Germans and the Jews were two races that should not mix with each other, was completely shared by racist Zionists. On this basis was erected the radical Zionist-Nazi alliance. Above: Hitler with his SAs during his climb to power.

… [N]o country in the world... tried to solve the Jewish problem as seriously as did Germany. Solution of the Jewish question? It was our Zionist dream! We never denied the existence of the Jewish question! Dissimilation? It was our own appeal!…26

As Prinz pointed out, the major point of agreement between radical Zionists and Nazis was their commitment to the existence of a Jewish question. Both sides regarded the Jewish presence in Europe as a problem and considered the coexistence of Jews and gentiles an impossibility. In contrast, the assimilationist Jews did not even want to admit that such a question existed. To the radical Zionists, this was treason. Therefore, they sought to settle the dispute through violence, and to persuade by force Jews who had lost their racial consciousness. The Jüdische Rundschau, the weekly periodical of the ZVfD, fiercely attacked Germany's assimilationist Jews. Its editor, Robert Weltsch, wrote:

At times of crisis throughout its history, the Jewish people has faced the question of its own guilt. Our most important prayer says "We were expelled from our country because of our sins" … Jewry bears a great guilt because it failed to heed Theodor Herzl's call … Because Jews did not display their Jewishness with pride, because they wanted to shirk the Jewish question, they must share the blame for the degradation of Jewry.27

The radical Zionist position was clear: Assimilationist Jews had sinned by ignoring their appeal, by denying their own racial identity; for this, they would pay by being oppressed by the radical Zionists' allies, the Nazis. Articles in the Jüdische Rundschau attacked the Jewish assimilationists and at the same time praising Nazism. In April 1933 Kurt Blumenfeld, general secretary of the ZVfD, wrote: "We who live here as a 'foreign race' have to respect racial consciousness and the racial interest of the German people absolutely."28 Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a radical Zionist, explained that the Zionists could agree only with the Nazis, racists like themselves: "A state which is constructed on the principle of the purity of nation and race can only have respect for those Jews who see themselves in the same way."29

The authorities of the Zionist Federation of Germany (ZVfD) at the 19th Zionist Congress. The man at far left is Kurt Blumenfeld, leader of the ZVfD and the foremost architect of the alliance established with Hitler.

Soon after the Nazis came to power, they enacted laws limiting the social rights of Jews—which did not bother radical Zionists at all. Indeed, the Nazis thought that they were doing the Jews a favor by passing laws against assimilation. The Rundschau published a statement by A. I. Berndt, the head of the Nazi press association, claiming that these laws were:

… both beneficial and regenerative for Judaism as well. By giving the Jewish minority an opportunity to lead its own life and assuring governmental support for this independent existence, Germany is helping Judaism to strengthen its national character and is making a contribution towards improving relations between the two peoples.30

The Nazi-radical Zionist alliance was based on just such considerations. The relationship between the two groups, which had begun as a demonstration of good will, was transformed into the most concrete and organized collaboration.

The radical Zionists were well aware of the Nazis' anti-Semitism, but did not consider it a threat; on the contrary, they wanted it to increase. Each law passed against the German Jews pleased them more. Brenner writes:

tighter the Nazis turned the screw on the Jews, the more convinced they became that a deal with the Nazis was possible. After all, they reasoned, the more the Nazis excluded the Jews from every aspect of German life, the more they would have need of Zionism to help them get rid of the Jews.31

Asking German Jews to Vote for Hitler

As frequently pointed out, there was a clear distinction between the assimilationists and the radical Zionists, who accepted the Nazis as allies, while the assimilationists hated National Socialism. The difference between the two is evident in the thinking and policies with regard to the Nazis of the Zionist Federation of Germany (ZVfD) and the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith (CV), founded by assimilationist German Jews. This split between radical Zionists and assimilationists also occurred against fascist regimes in other countries, an issue we shall later deal with in detail. But as a general rule, the radical Zionists got along well with fascist elements, while the assimilationists opposed them.

Nevertheless, there were exceptions to this rule. Some assimilationist Jews, particularly among the bourgeoisie fearful of the Left, collaborated collaborate with the fascists or at least sought to do so. A good example is the VNJ (Verband nationaldeutscher Juden - Union of National German Jews), second in importance to the CV among assimilationist Jewish organizations. In 1934, the VNJ began an effective campaign of support for Hitler. Taking note of this,The New York Times reported on August 18, 1934 that the VNJ was calling on every Jew who regarded himself as a German to vote for Hitler:

Whether in war or peace, we—the Union of National German Jews—do not hold our own interests above those of the German people and the German land. For that reason, we hail the uprising that brought Hitler to power in January 1933, even if it imposes difficulties on us… We entirely approve Hitler's chancellorship and the great historical significance of his movement. As Jews spiritually and materially devoted to the German nation, we recognize no other nation than Germany. We support Hitler's chancellorship and the unity of Chancellery institutions, and unhesitatingly advise all Jews who feel themselves to be German to vote for Hitler on August 19.32

Defeating the Anti-Nazi Boycott with Radical Zionist Help

The VNJ was undoubtedly an exception. The sympathy of the VNJ for the Nazis was not true of most assimilationist Jews. Hitler's leadership caused great worry for assimilationists in the other Western countries as well. In direct counterpoint to the radical Zionists' collaborationist efforts, the assimilationists looked for ways to resist the Nazis and take effective action against them, in concert with other anti-fascist groups.

Soon after the Nazis came to power, Western democracies started an effective boycott against the Nazis. Especially in the United States, the boycott started by the assimilationist Jews, leftists and liberals seriously dropped the sales of the Nazi goods and caused a crisis in the Reich economy. Radical Zionists helped the Nazis overcome this boycott during these hard times. Left: A Nazi flag burned during a boycott protest in Chicago.

The anti-Nazi boycott began when the Jewish War Veterans (JWV), an assimilationist organization in New York, announced a trade boycott against German merchandise on March 19, 1933, and four days later organized a huge protest parade. The movement grew stronger, eventually calling itself the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, and calling on all Americans to stop buying goods made in the Nazi Germany. The boycott spread to Europe, and was quite effective—by no means good news for a country trying to develop its economy. Due to the boycott organized by the assimilationists, sales of German goods dropped seriously in Germany's two main markets, Europe and the United States.

At once, some helpers emerged to aid the Nazis to overcome this critical threat to the German economy. Who were they? The radical Zionists, of course. While the assimilationist Jews were promoting a devastating boycott of the Nazi economy, the radical Zionists were lending their strange ally a helping hand.

In fact, the radical Zionists had begun their pro-Nazi efforts even before the first demonstrations, opposing the boycott even in the planning stages. These Zionists insistently rejected all suggestions that the Jewish organizations made with regard to the boycott announcement.

Stephen Wise, leader of the American Jewish Congress (AJC)

At first, the WZO tried to prevent it, and when that failed, it sought to ease the financial problems of its Nazi allies. Brenner writes: "[The WZO] not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers."33

The reasoning behind this behavior was that some people at the WZO administration saw Hitler as a blessing. Thanks to him, according to them, radical Zionism attained a great support; and again thanks to him, those Jews who had lost their racial awareness would come to their senses and emigrate to Palestine. Emil Ludwig, the world-famous popular biographer who was also an active radical Zionist of the time, expressed the WZO's general attitude:

Hitler will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful monument in Palestine … Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am very grateful to him.34

Another famous radical Zionist, Chaim Nachman Bialik, remarked: "Hitlerism has perhaps saved German Jewry, which was assimilated into annihilation … I, too, like Hitler, believe in the power of the blood idea."35

An Italian Jewish member of the WZO, Enzo Sereni, spoke in a similar vein: "Hitler's anti-Semitism might yet lead to the salvation of the Jews." At the Lucerne Congress, Sereni declared:

We have nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that we used the persecution of the Jews in Germany for the upbuilding of Palestine. That is how our sages and leaders of old have taught us … to make use of catastrophes of the Jewish population in Diaspora for upbuilding.36

So pleased were the radical Zionists with the solution Nazism offered that in order to chasten the assimilationists, they made plans to employ it in other countries as well. In 1936, an American rabbi, Abraham Jacobson, protested against this idea of racist Zionists:

How many times have we heard the impious wish uttered in despair over the apathy of American Jews to Zionism, that a Hitler descend upon them? Then they would realize the need for Palestine!37

These affinities between the Nazis and radical Zionists made their economic cooperation not only possible, but natural. The most significant economic accord between the two was an agreement, called Ha'avara ("transfer" in Hebrew), that allowed the transfer of German Jews, with their wealth, to Palestine. (More about this agreement later on.) The agreement let Germany market its goods in Palestine. The arrangement later expanded so that eventually, the WZO was exporting oranges to Belgium and Holland on Nazi ships. By 1936, the WZO was selling German wares in Britain.

The radical Zionists did the Nazis more favors than this. Some Zionists supplied sources of foreign currency to German weapons manufacturers. In his bookSo Werden Kriege Gemacht (How Wars Are Started), Albert Norden describes another Nazi-radical Zionist commercial deal. He writes that raw materials of strategic importance to Germany were supplied through a company called International Nickel Trust, which controlled eighty-five percent of the nickel produced in the capitalist countries, and whose owners were a number of Zionists. One year after Hitler came to power, the INT and Germany's I. G. Farben Industrie signed an agreement: More than half of Germany's nickel production would be met by the INT, with Germany thus making a fifty percent foreign exchange saving.

Hitler's Radical Zionist Financiers

Some important Zionist investors in Western nations lent Hitler significant financial support. Sometimes brokered by the WZO, this financial aid helped Nazi Germany to become increasingly powerful.

This support that certain Jews gave Hitler later turned into a dreadful nightmare. This policy, implemented by some Jews in order to make their radical views a reality, and by others merely for material gain, cost the lives of many of their fellow Jews.

The True Meaning of the Hitler Salutation: Millions are Behind Me. The Accomplice of the Guiding- Managing Classes.

A number of sources cite secret affiliations with Hitler. Another figure who played an important role in financing him was Clarence Dillon (1882-1979), an American Jew. The son of Samuel and Bertha Lapowski (or Lapowitz), Dillon served as right-hand man to the famous Jewish financier Bernard Baruch during World War I. During the years before the World War II, when relations with Hitler began, Dillon played a crucial role in arming the Third Reich.

Another Hitler supporter was Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell, which had been founded by the Jewish Samuel family. In May 1933, Alfred Rosenberg, a significant Nazi figure, was a guest at Deterding's large estate, one mile from Windsor castle. After this secret meeting, Deterding and his backers, the Samuel family, gave Hitler thirty million pounds.

These facts suggest the close connection between Nazis and certain Jewish financiers devoted to radical Zionism, who funded the German Führer. Interestingly, Hitler admitted that he was financed by the Jews in question. In Hitler M'a Dit (Hitler Told Me), Hermann Rauschning, one of Hitler's closest friends in the period before World War II, quotes the German leader as saying, "The Jews made an important contribution to my struggle. A great many Jews supported me financially in our movement."38

No matter how much radical groups use Rauschning's book as a reference and base their own perverted views on it, this information is most striking.

In short, Hitler obtained significant financial support from radical Zionist investors with the help of some people at the WZO and its German branch, the ZVfD. The relationship between this known anti-Semite and some Jews played a vital role in overcoming the anti-Nazi boycott and in allowing Germany to enter the war as an industrial giant.

As a result of the assimilationist Jews' incitement, the British government decided to support the anti-Nazi boycott. In reaction, Blackshirt, the newspaper of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, the greatest fan of Hitler in Britain, wrote:

Can you beat that! We are cutting off our nose to spite our face and refuse to trade with Germany in order to defend the poor Jews. The Jews, themselves, in their own country, are to continue making profitable dealings with Germany themselves. Fascists can't better counter the malicious propaganda to destroy friendly relations with Germany than by using this fact.39

For radical Zionists, the most advantageous deal was the transfer agreement designed to resettle German Jews in Palestine. This may be the most important result of the alliance between the radical racist Zionists and the Nazis.

Nazi-Radical Zionist Agreement to Promote German Jewish Emigration

The radical Zionists chiefly hoped to obtain the Nazis' encouragement of immigration by German Jews to Palestine. For their part, the Nazis wanted to rid Germany of its Jewish minority as soon as possible. Thus, not long after they came to power, they signed an agreement allowing the German Jews to emigrate to Palestine. This accord, concluded between the Anglo-Palestine Bank (linked to the WZO) and the Reich Ministry of Finance, enabled the transfer of Jewish assets to Palestine, and created a market for German industrial goods there. On August 25, 1933, as the Irish historian and politician Conor Cruise O'Brien explains, the Anglo-Palestine Bank agreed with the German Ministry of Economics to use Jewish assets to purchase goods needed in Palestine. This arrangement became the basis of an official plan, in which Nazis and Zionists collaborated to let German Jews emigrate to Palestine with a portion of their assets.

In 1933 the Anglo-Palestine Bank established in Tel-Aviv the Trust and Transfer Office Ha'avara Ltd. A corresponding body was set up in Berlin with the help of two leading Jewish bankers, Max Warburg of MM Warburg in Hamburg, and Dr. Siegmund Wassermann of AE Wassermann in Berlin. The Berlin company, known as Palästina Treuhandstelle zur Beratung Deutscher Juden, assumed responsibility for negotiating with German authorities the settlement of contracts with German Jews wanting to leave for Palestine. Most of the 50,000 Jews who left Germany between 1933 and 1939 used the services of Ha'avara, during which time a wealth of some 63 million pounds Sterling was transferred to Palestine. The actual German policy during those years was to support the Palestinian Jews against the Arabs.40

Through this Ha'avara, or "transfer," agreement, some Zionists achieved their main goal: to enable the Jews to emigrate to Palestine. At the same time, the Nazi economy, which was lagging due to the boycott, was also bolstered. Emigrating Jews bought German industrial products, then sold them in Palestine, and the profit from the transaction compensated the Jews for the capital they had to leave behind in Germany. Certain circles at the World Zionist Organization not only undermined the effectiveness of the Jewish boycott, but also became the biggest distributor of Nazi-manufactured products in the Middle East and northern Europe. Through Trust & Transfer Office Ha'avara Ltd., the WZO assumed basic sales rights on German products brought to Palestine. Significant quantities of Nazi products were to be purchased with money from German-Jewish capitalists. Thus the WZO opened the doors for the Nazis to big market opportunities in the Middle East. On 7 December, 1937, the German Bureau, which concerned itself with foreign exchange matters, announced that since 1933, foreign sales-based transfer processes had brought in a profit of 70 million golden marks for Palestine.

Above: Two Gestapo soldiers responsible for transferring the Jews to Palestine. The subtitles of this photograph, included in a book of propaganda entitled Pillar of Fire, deserve particular attention.

These dealings between the radical Zionist leaders and the Nazis, especially the Ha'avara (transfer) agreement, have been described in a number of other books. For example, Lenni Brenner recounts the Ha'avara agreement in Zionism in the Age of Dictators. The transfer agreement is also mentioned in Moshe Shonfeld's The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, published in Israel; as well as Francis Nicosia's aforementioned The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, among others.

The secret archives of Wilhelmstrasse, the German foreign office, reveal that Hitler's Reich concluded an agreement with Jewish agents to facilitate Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine. The following, from a German foreign office document dated June 22, 1937, notes that the Nazi policies might result in a Jewish state:

This German position is entirely dictated by domestic considerations. In practice, it promotes the consolidation of Jewry in Palestine and thus, facilitates the building of a Jewish state, and could lead one to conclude that Germany favors the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.41

The same document stresses that Jewish emigration was regulated by Hitler, who had a special interest in the matter.

These facts surprise most people today, since official historians have taken great pains to hide this alliance. The radical Zionists and the Nazis both sought to keep their alliance secret, and managed to conceal their relationship with general success even when their collaboration was at its height. Nevertheless, the two sides were unable to prevent some rumors from spreading. American writer Edward Tivnan, in The Lobby: Jewish Political Power in US Foreign Policy, indicates that by the end of 1930s, the clandestine alliance between certain Zionists and the Nazis had given rise to rumors that created considerable unease among American Jews.42

The transfer agreement was in force continuously from 1933 until war broke out in 1939. Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine ended that year, not because of disagreement between the two sides, but because wartime conditions no longer permitted German ships to sail to Palestine, a mandated territory of Great Britain. During the period 1933-1939, almost sixty thousand German Jews had been transferred to Palestine. A report issued by the German interior ministry in December 1937 summed up the results of Ha'avara:

There is no doubt that Ha'avara has contributed most significantly to the very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided not only the largest source of money, but also the most intelligent group of immigrants, and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial products essential for development.43

If the World War II hadn't brought the agreement to an end, no doubt the Jewish emigration promoted by the Nazi-radical Zionist cooperation would have continued. This is corroborated by the increasing numbers of Jews who immigrated to Palestine in the years 1938 and 1939. Ten thousand German Jews were to be transferred to Palestine in October 1939, but these "reservations" had to be canceled when war began in September. The Ha'avara agreement continued until 1941, though with interruptions. All told, the German Jews transferred to Palestine as a result of the Nazi-radical Zionist cooperation made up fifteen percent of the total Jewish population of Palestine at the time. In The Transfer Agreement, devoted to the Ha'avara, Edwin Black reports that the accord contributed greatly to the establishment of the state of Israel by triggering an economic boom in Palestine.44

Nürnberg Laws and "Juden Raus! Auf Nach Palästina
[(Jews Out! To Palestine]"

While Nazis were engaged with certain Zionists to promote the emigration of the German Jews, they were also following policies to increase German Jews' racial consciousness, again with a number of Zionists' approval. In Zionism in the Age of Dictators, Brenner frequently stresses how pleased these Zionists were with the Nazis' racist policies. One example is the Nürnberg Laws, promulgated in September 1935, which prohibited marriage between Jews and Germans.

These laws were aimed at isolating the Jews from the German community. The new legislation, named "Laws for Protection of German Blood and Honor," deprived the Jews of German citizenship and became social outcasts. They were barred from the civil service, including teaching school, forbidden to write for periodicals, and banned from working in radio, stage, or cinema, and even farming. Marriage between Germans and Jews was of course forbidden. Jews were prohibited from displaying the German flag. All these measures stemmed from the concept that the Jews could never be Germans—a belief held by Nazis and some Zionists alike.

The Nazis' anti-Semitic policy, in full consort with the plans of radical Zionists, forced the German Jews to emigrate from the country. The Transfer Agreement signed between racist Zionists and the Nazis guaranteed that Jews leaving the country would be transferred to Palestine, not to any other "wrong address." Above: The Jews hoping to emigrate to Palestine, in front of the legal immigration offices in Germany in 1939.

Brenner cites an interesting commentary by Alfred Berndt, the German News Bureau's editor-in-chief, who recalled that only two weeks before, speakers at the World Zionist Congress in Lucerne had reiterated that the Jews around the world were rightly viewed as a separate people unto themselves, regardless of where they lived. Berndt explained that Hitler had simply met "the demands of the International Zionist Congress by making the Jews who live in Germany a national minority."45 Brenner also tells us that in the Nazi state, only two flags were permitted: the swastika and the blue-and-white Zionist banner. His source is none other than American Zionist leader Rabbi Stephen Wise:

The determination to rid the German national body of the Jewish element, however, led Hitlerism to discover its "kinship" with Zionism, the Jewish nationalism of liberation. Therefore Zionism became the only other party legalized in the Reich, the Zionist flag the only other flag permitted in Nazi-land.46

Lenni Brenner calls the Nazis' policy "philo-Zionism," and writes that they helped radical Zionists in every respect, enacting various laws to help the Jews avoid assimilation and preserve their racial consciousness. In 1936, Nazis took a new measure prohibiting rabbis from using the German language and requiring them to use Hebrew in their sermons from December 6 (Hanukkah) of that year on. This was a considerable help to some Zionists, who were trying to gather all the world's Jews in Palestine and force them to speak Hebrew, a language they had started to forget.47

The Nürnberg laws, completely isolating the Jews from German society, intensified some radical Zionists' trust the belief in the Nazis. Above: Hitler during one of the grand shows of strength held in Nürnberg.

The Nazis' attempts to make the German Jews racially conscious were not limited to these measures. According to Brenner, in spring 1934, his staff presented Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, with a situation report on the Jewish question: The vast majority of the Jews in Germany still considered themselves Germans. They suggested certain solutions to that problem. What could these be? As Brenner writes:

… the way to break down their resistance was to instill a distinctive Jewish identity amongst them by systematically promoting Jewish schools, athletic teams, Hebrew, Jewish art and music, etc.48

On the night of October 27, 1938, according to Brenner, at a demonstration against the Jews in Hannover, the slogan "Juden Raus! Auf nach Palästina" (Jews out! Off to Palestine) was used by Hitler's SA, and soon spread across the entire country. The slogan concisely expressed the joint goal of the Nazis and some Zionists—to transfer all the Jews from Germany to Palestine.

Radical Zionist Collaboration with the SS

The SS (Schutz-Staffel, or Protective Echelon), a party formation devoted to Adolf Hitler, is often regarded as the most radical, fanatical, and ruthless organ of Nazi Germany. The SS was organized by Heinrich Himmler by Hitler's order, and functioned as a Nazi brain trust. Lenni Brenner describes the relationship between the SS and certain Zionists:

By 1934 the SS had become the most pro-Zionist element in the Nazi Party. Other Nazis were even calling them "soft" on the Jews. Baron von Mildenstein had returned from his six-month visit to Palestine as an ardent Zionist sympathizer. Now as the head of the Jewish department of the SS's Security Service, he started studying Hebrew and collecting Hebrew records; when his companion Tuchler visited his office in 1934, he was greeted by the strains of familiar Jewish folk tunes. There were maps on the walls showing the rapidly increasing strength of Zionism inside Germany.49

Goebbels (left), the propaganda minister of the Nazis, had a long proradical Zionist article published in a Nazi publication named Der Angriff and had a medal struck, bearing on one side the swastika, on the other the Star of David. Heydrich (right), chief of SS Security Service, was one of the pro-radical Zionist Nazis.

The series by the SS officer von Mildenstein praised radical Zionism in the Nazis' propaganda organ, Der Angriff: "A Nazi went to Palestine!"

Mildenstein not only wrote articles praising radical Zionism, but also persuaded Goebbels to run his report as a twelve-part series in Goebbels's newspaper Der Angriff (The Assault), a leading Nazi propaganda organ. The long report was serialized from September 26 to October 9, 1934. In it, Mildenstein praised racist Zionist efforts in Palestine. Radical Zionists were showing the SS how to solve the Jewish problem. According to Mildenstein, the soil had transformed the Jews within a decade, and these "new Jews" would form a new people. To commemorate the baron's findings, Goebbels had a medal struck, bearing on one side the swastika, on the other the star of David.50

In May 1935, Reinhard Heydrich, then chief of the SS Security Service, wrote an article extolling racist Zionism for Das Schwarze Korps, the official newspaper of the SS. Heydrich considered that there were two basic categories of Jews: the Zionists and assimilationists. The radical Zionists had strict racial standards, just like the Nazis. But according to Heydrich, the assimilationists posed a threat—yet it was entirely reasonable to cooperate with the racist Zionists. Heydrich concluded his article with this moving tribute to his Jewish comrades:

The time cannot be far distant when Palestine will again be able to accept its sons who have been lost to it for over a thousand years. Our good wishes together with our official good will go with them.51

Some Zionists Spying for SS Agents; SS Weapons for These Zionists

After a while, close ties developed between the SS and some of the armed Jewish organizations. The most important of these was the Haganah, the military arm of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, which was under the control of the WZO. (Before Israel was founded, the Haganah formed the nucleus of the future Israeli army. Future Israeli leaders such as Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin served in the Haganah.) In 1937, secret meetings took place between the Haganah and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), the security service of the SS. On February 26 of that year, Feivel Polkes, an agent of the Haganah, traveled to Berlin. The man whom the Nazis assigned to negotiate with Polkes was Adolf Eichmann, SD's specialist for Jewish migration. Eichmann had been von Mildenstein's protégé in support of radical Zionism, and had studied Hebrew and read Herzl. The Eichmann-Polkes conversations were recorded in a report submitted to Eichmann's superior, Franz-Albert Six, and found in SS files captured at the end of the World War II. The files reveal that Polkes claimed that the radical Zionists could find new sources of oil for the Nazis; in return, they required that Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine be heavily increased. Liking what Polkes had to say, Six decided that a working alliance with certain Zionists would be in the Nazis' interest:

Pressure can be put on the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany in such a way that those Jews emigrating from Germany go exclusively to Palestine and not go to other countries. Such measures lie entirely in the German interest and is [sic] already prepared through measures of the Gestapo. Polkes' plans to create a Jewish majority in Palestine would be aided at the same time through these measures.52

The contacts Polkes made in Berlin were followed up that same year. On October 2, 1937, the liner Romania arrived in Haifa with two German "journalists" aboard. In fact, they were two senior members of the SS, Herbert Hagen and Adolf Eichmann. They met with their agent, Reichert, and then with Feivel Polkes, who took them to visit a kibbutz, one of the communal farms established by Jewish immigrants during the settlement of Palestine. Eichmann was impressed by what he saw and years later, having fled to Argentina, he dictated his memoirs on tape:

I did see enough to be very impressed by the way the Jewish colonists were building up their land. I admired their desperate will to live, the more so because I was myself an idealist. In the years that followed I often said to Jews with whom I had dealings that, had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist. I could not imagine being anything else. In fact, I would have been the most ardent Zionist imaginable.53

For his part, Polkes made some interesting remarks during his meeting with the SS: "In the Jewish chauvinistic circles people were very pleased with the radical German policy, because … in the foreseeable future, the Jews could reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs in Palestine." Also during his visit in February, he had offered the Haganah's services in spying for the Nazis.

The close relations between the SS and radical Zionists were doubtless operating at the highest level, up to the Führer himself. In early 1938, Otto von Henting, for many years a mediator between the Nazis and the radical Zionists, called with some good news: The Führer had decided that all obstacles to Jewish emigration to Palestine were now to be removed.

In supporting some Zionists, the Nazis went so far as to provide weapons to militants fighting Palestinians. In The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, Nicosia points out that the SS supplied weapons to the Haganah, the military branch of the WZO in Palestine, for use against the Arabs.54 

Radical Zionists Prevent Jews from Fleeing

In Zionism in the Age of Dictators, Lenni Brenner remarks that because the Zionist movement did not want the bulk of German Jewry in Palestine, it might be assumed that the Zionists sought to find other havens for their brethren. But that did not happen.55

In fact, the radical Zionists did nothing to save German Jewry from Nazi cruelty. Even when the rumors and reports of the Holocaust had reached their peak, the radical Zionists did not change their attitude. Indeed, this was depicted in a great many films on the subject.

In the introduction to David S. Wyman's book (The Abandonment of the Jews), the famous Jewish author Elie Wiesel is one of those "infuriated" by the way that certain Zionist leaders failed to rescue the Jewish people:

The Jews were abandoned…  Sad and revolting as it might sound, both the major Jewish organizations and the most powerful figures of the Jewish community could not or did not want to form a unified rescue commission.

The World Zionist Organization formed a military arm named Haganah to fight with the Arabs in Palestine. In the photo, taken in 1938, are seen three important leaders of a specially selected unit of Haganah: Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Sadeh and Yigal Allon. After the establishment of the Israeli State, Haganah formed the nucleus of Israel's army. In the following years, Dayan and Allon became Ministers of Foreign Relations. But there remained an unknown truth about Haganah: Some of the arms that the unit used against the Arabs were supplied by the Nazis!

Later in his book, Wyman confirms Wiesel's views, stating that none of the American Jewish communities made any reference to operations to rescue the Jews of Europe. None, especially Jewish organizations, sought to save them. At a meeting held in Pittsburg in January 1943, B'nai B'rith wanted all propaganda waged to rescue the Jews to be transformed into a propaganda supporting the foundation of a Jewish State in Palestine.

In 1938, David Ben Gurion, the second man in the WZO after Weizmann and later Israel's first prime minister, expressed this radical Zionist thinking in a speech he made at a meeting of Labour Zionist leaders in England:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative.56

The most damning aspect of the radical Zionists' policy is not their failure to save Jews. The real scandal is that they also blocked German Jews' attempts to emigrate to any country except Palestine.

In 1943, a distinguished radical Zionist opposed the rescue of the German Jews: Rabbi Stephen Wise. As Zionism's chief spokesman in America, Wise delivered a speech opposing the resolution that called for a government rescue agency for European Jews. Rabbi Wise had also defended American immigration quotas in 1938, in a letter he wrote as leader of the American Jewish Congress (AJC). Wise stated that he also opposed changes in the law that might enable the Jews to take refuge in America.

Just as in the U.S., radical Zionists had also closed England's portals to German Jews. Members of the British Parliament issued a call for their own government to give Jews in difficulties the right to sanctuary on British territories. This proposal, made by 277 gentiles with the aim of saving the Jews, infuriated some Zionist leaders: On 27 January, 1943, in a debate by a hundred or so Christian members of Parliament on what could be done to rescue the Jews, a radical Zionist spokesman stated that they actually opposed this proposal because it failed to contain the necessary preparations for the colonization of Palestine.57

It is not hard to understand why the radical Zionists prevented Jews from escaping the Nazis. Had the doors of America or England been opened to the Jews, many of the skilled Jewish technicians and qualified specialists whom racist Zionists needed for Palestine would have headed to those countries instead. To insure the immigration of the targeted Jews to Palestine, they condemned other unqualified German Jews to Nazi oppression.

While radical Zionists maintained the collaboration they had set up with the SS, many innocent Jews were subjected to Nazi barbarity.

Without a doubt, they betrayed their own people. Throughout the war, a Slovakian rabbi, Dov Michael Weissmandel, worked to rescue Jews from Nazi control, but found his efforts hampered by the Zionists. At length, when the radical Zionists began to spread rumors of a Jewish holocaust, Weissmandel became infuriated. In July 1944, in a letter to the radical Zionist leaders, the rabbi expressed his revulsion:

Why have you done nothing until now? Who is guilty of this frightful negligence? Are you not guilty, our Jewish brothers …? … Brutal, you are and murderers, too, you are, because of the coldbloodedness of the silence in which you watch, because you sit with folded arms and do nothing, although you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour.

You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane? Don't you know the hell around us? For whom are you saving your money? … Murderers!58

Weissmandel's intuition was acute. Indeed, as we have already seen, radical Zionists "saved their money for the murderers" by giving the Nazis enormous financial support. The radical Zionists believed it was necessary to work with the enemies of the Jews, to support the pressure the anti-Semites imposed on Jews, in order to establish a Jewish state. They readily financed the Nazis' persecution of their fellow Jews.

Mussolini, Italian Fascism, and Radical Zionism

Radical Zionism did not form alliances with anti-Semites in Germany alone. Since they aspired to induce Jews everywhere to emigrate to Palestine, some Zionists made secret alliances with fascist powers in a number of other countries in the 1930s and 1940s. The most noteworthy of these was with Mussolini, Hitler's most important ally.

After gaining power in the early 1920s, Mussolini began to impose a totalitarian system that he called Fascism. He was intensely interested in the Mediterranean and consequently, in the Middle East. He invaded Ethiopia to re-establish Italian sovereignty over the area that had once been ruled by the ancient Roman Empire. Consequently it was impossible for him to ignore the Palestine question. From the time he became interested in Palestine, Mussolini sided with the radical Zionists. He knew that radical Zionism was an important power, and he intended to wrest from Britain the role of its guardian.

Rabbi Dov Michael Weissmandel addressed the radical Zionists as; "Are you not guilty, our Jewish brothers …? … Brutal you are, and murderers, too, you are, because of the cold-bloodedness of the silence in which you watch, because you sit with folded arms and do nothing, although you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour. You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane? Don't you know the hell around us? For whom are you saving your money? … Murderers!"

Zionism in the Age of Dictators details the relations between the two wings of the radical Zionists and Mussolini. According to Brenner, the Jews were an important factor in Mussolini's party. Five Jews had been among the founders of the Fascist movement. In the following years, Mussolini would appoint a Jew as president of the Banca Commerciale Italiana. Two of Mussolini's foreign ministers, Sidney Sonnino and Carlo Schanzar, were of Jewish descent.

In the second half of the 1920s, Mussolini met several times with some representatives of the WZO, but of these meetings, no written record exists. Weizmann successfully kept them a secret. As Brenner points out, Weizmann's autobiography is deliberately vague on his relations with Mussolini, and often misleading. But there is no doubt that Mussolini and Weizmann got along well. On September 17, 1926, Weizmann was invited to Rome to speak with "Il Duce." Mussolini offered to help the radical Zionists to build up their economy in Palestine, and the Italian press began publishing favorable articles on radical Zionism. One month later, Nahum Sokolow, the WZO's number two man, visited the Italian dictator, and again Mussolini stressed his support for radical Zionism.

Mussolini's relations with some Zionists who had walked out of the WZO were more comprehensive and also more effective. Brenner deals with these fascinating ties in Zionism in the Age of Dictators andin The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir. According to Brenner, after these Zionists walked out of the WZO, they began to look for a new ally. Italy was the most suitable candidate. Jabotinsky dreamed of a new Mediterranean order in alliance with Italy. As he explained in a 1935 interview: "We want a Jewish Empire. Just like there is the Italian or French on the Mediterranean, we want a Jewish Empire." This Jewish "Empire" would include Jordan as well as Palestine, and parts of Egypt and Iraq. Jabotinsky considered himself the Jewish version of Mazzini or Garibaldi!

Mussolini had great sympathy for the Zionists led by Jabotinsky and described them as the "Fascists of Zion." In November 1934, Mussolini allowed Betar, Revisionists' youth wing, to set up a squadron at the maritime academy at Civitavecchia, which was run by the Blackshirts. Militants of the Betar trained together with the Blackshirts, then went to Palestine to fight in the ranks of the Irgun.

Mussolini was Hitler's greatest ally. They maintained the same ideology, entered into an alliance in what was called the "Pact of Steel" and supported one another during World War II. Having so much in common, the two fascists adopted similar policies of support toward radical Zionism, so much so that the militants of the Zionist Betar organization were trained with Il Duce's fascist units known as the Black Shirts.

Jabotinsky and his supporters became increasingly friendly with Fascism. Abba Achimeir and Wolfgang von Weisl, the movement's leaders, suggested Jabotinsky be called their Duce. Jabotinsky wanted to hold the international Zionist congress under his leadership in Trieste, in Fascist Italy. But the congress was cancelled, for fear of public reaction in the West.

It should be noted that the Zionists led by Jabotinsky also praised Hitler and the Nazis. During a speech, Abba Achimeir expressed his views: "Yes, we Revisionists have a great admiration for Hitler. Hitler has saved Germany. Otherwise it would have perished within four years."59

These people's Nazi sympathies were evident even from how they dressed. Members of Betar wore the same brown uniforms as Hitler's SA.

Meanwhile, the relationships radical Zionists carried on concurrently with Hitler and Mussolini led to a third ally: Francisco Franco. In 1939, after defeating Spain's Republicans after a three-year civil war with Hitler's and Mussolini's support, Franco then installed his own version of fascism, called Falangism. Eventually, radical Zionists found their way to Franco's side. It is well known that many Republican Jews fought against Franco, but these Jews were overwhelmingly assimilationists. As Lenni Brenner points out, the radical Zionists never supported the Jews who fought against Franco; on the contrary, they strongly opposed them.

All across Europe, from Spain to Austria, from Poland to Romania, many fascist movements took Hitler or Mussolini as their models, and grew increasingly powerful. That meant new allies for the racist, radical Zionism.

Alliances with Austrian, Romanian and Japanese Anti-Semites

The Jews made up only 2.8 percent of Austria's entire population, yet after the World War I, a powerful anti-Semitism developed there, and grew rapidly, particularly under Hitler's influence. Engelbert Dollfuss, leader of the Christian Social Party and Austria's Prime Minister, and Kurt von Schuschnigg, who took Dollfuss' place after his death in 1934, signed anti-Jewish laws similar to those of the Nazis. Assimilationist Jews found Austria's new policies upsetting; but as might be guessed, the racist Zionists were pleased at the intensifying anti-Semitism. After the anti-Semitic Prime Minister Dollfuss's death, WZO leader Nahum Sokolow stated, "He was one of those who established, with my help, the organisation of Gentile Friends of Zionism in the Austrian capital."60

Dollfuss, as a friend of the Zionists, had instituted a harsh anti-Semitic policy that would continue throughout the 1930s. Jews were discriminated against in the civil service and the professions. In 1935, the government announced plans for setting up separate schools for Jews. Assimilationist Jews naturally opposed the new ghetto schools, but Robert Stricker, the Austrian parliament's only Jewish deputy and a leader of the radical Zionist movement, told the government that a number of Zionists very much welcomed these measures.

Above: Mussolini, during a visit he paid to a center consisting mostly of radical Zionists established in Bari in 1934. On the poster in front of him is written, "A pure and strong Jewish generation is being born in Palestine to be worthy of the Zionist Renaissance."

The assimilationists tried to alert the nations of the West to the dangerous anti-Semitic trends in Austria. In an immediate response, Der Stimme, the organ of the Austrian Zionist Federation, condemned the dissemination of atrocity stories from Austria abroad, and backed up the anti-Semitic government. Brenner writes that during the period in which the Austrian government was discriminating against the Jews, it was able to get financing with the help of some Zionists.

Similar events took place in Romania, where the Jews comprised 5.4 percent of the population. That country had a longstanding tradition of anti-Semitism, and this hostility towards the Jews grew considerably prior to World War II. Anti-Semitic extremists were active from the 1920s on, and when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, they became fierce and aggressive.

Romanian anti-Semitism was spearheaded by a fascist party called the Legion of the Archangel Michael, led by Corneliu Codreanu. The party had a militia called the Iron Guard, who perpetrated various street attacks on Jews in the years 1929 and 1932. Hitler's rise greatly strengthened the Legion's position.

At this juncture, it was the duty of Jewish leaders to begin a serious campaign against anti-Semitism and to form a political alliance with the anti-fascist powers. Some leaders did not adopt such an approach, for most Jewish leaders were radical Zionists. Some leaders of the WZO believed that it would be advantageous to have anti-Semitism come into power and was planning an extension of its Ha'avara strategy to Romania. "Jidanii in Palastina!" (Yids to Palestine!) had long been the anti-Semites' war cry. For their part, some WZO leaders talked openly of helping Romania relieve the pressure caused by the presence of too many Jews.61 In January 1941, the Iron Guard carried out a bloody attack in Bucharest, slaughtering an estimated 2,000 Jews and cutting the throats of some 200. Again, there was no reaction from the radical Zionists.

The alliance between radical Zionism and anti-Semitism even extended to the Far East, where the major fascist power was Japan. After the World War I, Japan had intensified its expansionist policies and eventually joined Hitler and Mussolini's pact. Relations between the Japanese regime and the Nazis were so good that Hitler even awarded this Far Eastern race the title of "honorary Aryans."

Why the radical Zionists sought collaboration with Japan is explained by Japan's 1931 annexation of Manchuria, which had a sizable Jewish community. Some Zionists thought that by collaborating with Japan, as they'd done with Hitler, they could pressure these Jews to emigrate. Thus the puppet state of Manchukuo, established by the Japanese, would be transformed into a radical Zionist ally in the Far East.

Brenner notes that the Japanese administration, particularly the military, had its own distinctive version of anti-Semitism.62 The Japanese generals believed in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Because they viewed local Jews as its agents, they wanted Manchuria to be rid of Jews as soon as possible. Finally they arrived at the same solution as Hitler's: to support radical Zionism.

In December 1937, the Jewish communities of the Far East held a conference in Harbin, Manchuria, organized by Abraham Kaufman, the leader of the Zionists of Harbin. The platform was decked with the Japanese, Manchukuo, and Zionist flags. Leaders of the Zionist Betar attended the conference as honor guards. The meeting was addressed by General Higuchi of Japanese Military Intelligence; General Vrashevsky of the anti-Semitic White Guards; and officials of the puppet state of Manchukuo. The conference issued a resolution, which it sent to every major Jewish organization in the world, pledging cooperation with Japan and Manchukuo in building a new order in Asia. In return, the Japanese acknowledged and supported radical Zionism as the Jewish national movement. Shortly thereafter, in fact, relations between the Manchukuo regime and Betar improved enormously. Betar members were present at just about every invitation and celebration held by the anti-Semitic regime.63

This interesting collaboration with the Japanese brought few significant gains. Only a small number of Jews was transferred from Manchuria to Palestine.

Polish Anti-Semites and Radical Zionists

In the early 1920s, radical Zionism was popular and powerful in Poland, which had the largest Jewish community in Europe—2.8 million, or ten percent of Poland's total population. Poland was also home to an intense, fervent anti-Semitism. A strong radical Zionism and strong anti-Semitism: the two, as was becoming the rule, were made for collaboration with one another.

Lenni Brenner has closely studied the relationship between the Polish anti-Semites and some radical Zionists. According to him, the first agreement, known as the Ugoda (compromise), was negotiated in 1925 by the radical Zionist leaders Leon Reich and Osias Thon. Their negotiating partner, Wladyslaw Grabski, Poland's prime minister and a firm anti-Semite, was seeking an American loan to Poland and thought that his agreement with some radical Zionists would help him. Under the agreement, these Zionists received important concessions. Brenner writes that, due to their agreement with the anti-Semitic prime minister, some Jews saw Reich and Thon as traitors to the community.64

This agreement did not last for long, however. As a result of a coup in May 1926, Joseph Pilsudski became dictator. Like his predecessor, Pilsudski was an anti-Semite with close contacts to some radical Zionists. On January 26, 1934, Pilsudski signed a ten-year non-aggression pact with Hitler. He remained loyal to the radical Zionists until his sudden death on May 12, 1935. Osias Thon and Apolinary Hartglas, two leading figures of the Zionist movement in question, proposed that in his memory a Pilsudski Forest be planted in Palestine. The Palestinian Zionists who supported Jabotinsky announced that they were going to build a hostel for immigrants to be named in Pilsudski's honor.65

Engelbert Dollfuss, the anti-Semitic dictator of Austria and "one of the Gentile friends of Zionism," in the words of Nahum Sokolow, the leader of the World Zionist Organization.

After Pilsudski's death, anti-Semitism increased in Poland. There were anti-Semitic sentiments in the army, particularly among the colonels. The anti-Semitic hardcore was grouped in a racist party called the Naras (National Radicals), which admired the Nazis. At the end of the 1930s, the Naras began to organize pogroms against the Jews. The Bund, chief party of the leftist assimilationist Jews, organized units to resist the Naras. But the radical Zionists never resisted the Naras, whose activities were very advantageous to them. The Naras militants' slogan was, "Moszku idz do Palestyny!" (Kikes to Palestine!). One major reason Jews in Poland moved away from radical Zionism, Brenner relates, was that the Naras favored the radical Zionists. As he notes, the anti-Semitic Polish colonels, too, had always been enthusiastically philo-Zionist.66

Some radical Zionists were as pro-anti-Semitic as the anti-Semites were pro-radical Zionist! A leading radical Zionist, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, once proclaimed that the Jews were so much "excess baggage", and that "Poland has a million more Jews than it can possibly accommodate." Abba Achimeir, one of the leaders of the radical Zionist movement in Palestine, expressed in his diary the following sentiment: "I wish that a million Polish Jews might be slaughtered. Then they might realize that they are living in a ghetto."67

The Stern Gang Proposes a Military Alliance with the Nazis

The puppet state of Manchukuo, established by Japanese in Manchuria, was one of the interesting anti-Semitic alliances of radical Zionists. Above: Ceremonies that founded the Manchukuo state.

Revisionism, based on a racist ideology, as opposed to the leftist tendency of the WZO, stepped up its armed attacks in Palestine in the second half of the 1930s. Their assaults were directed both at the Arabs and the power of the British mandate, which was strictly limiting Jewish immigration, and were organized by the Irgun, a radical Zionist guerrilla force. After the outbreak of the World War II, the Irgun split into two factions. The Jabotinsky wing decided to call off military operations against the British for the duration of the war. The second faction, smaller and more radical, advocated continuing the struggle against the British until London allowed the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. This group, led by Avraham Stern, broke with Irgun in September 1940 and established itself as a separate organization. This most radical group of Zionists later renamed itself LEHI (Lohamei Herut Yisrael—Fighters for the Freedom of Israel).

Also known as the Stern Gang, it had very ambitious goals. As stated in Avraham Stern's Eighteen Principles, the group's major aims included a Jewish state with borders as defined in the Book of Genesis (from the Nile of Egypt to the Great River, the River Euphrates); the expulsion of the Arabs; and finally, the re-building of the temple in Jerusalem.

The Stern Gang had decided to fight the British, and so immediately looked for ways to cooperate with England's enemies. In September 1940, only a few weeks after separating from the Irgun, the group's leaders made contact with an Italian agent in Jerusalem. There they offered an agreement whereby Mussolini would actively support the establishment of a Jewish state in return for the Stern Gang's military cooperation with fascist Italy. But this offer led to no tangible results, because the Italians did not take the gang's power very seriously.

Next, Stern sent Naftali Lubentschik to Beirut in order to meet with the Germans. Lubentschik made contact with two Nazis, Rudolf Rosen and Otto von Hentig, and offered them a comprehensive military alliance. After the war, a copy of the Stern Gang's proposal was discovered in the files of the German Embassy in Turkey (and is therefore known as the Ankara document). Another copy of the document would later be revealed by the German historian Klaus Polkhe, who studied the secret archives of the Third Reich. According to the document, the radical Zionist Stern Organization proposed an official military alliance with the Nazi government. In summary, it included the following:

1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a New Order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied in the NMO [National Military Organization];
2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed volkish-national Hebrium would be possible; and
3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of sustaining and strengthening the German position in the Near East.

Throughout Jozef Pilsudski's dictatorial regime in Poland, racist Zionists established close relations with Pilsudski, known for his anti-Semitism.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognised on the part of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's side.68

In December 1941, Stern sent Nathan Yalin-Mor to try to contact the Nazis in Turkey, but the meeting could not take place because he was arrested on the way. According to Brenner, there is no indication in the archives as to how the Nazis responded to this offer. Most likely, they regarded Stern as small and ineffective, and didn't think much of its offer. What is crucial, however, is that a radical Zionist organization proposed military alliance to the Nazis in 1941, the year the Jewish genocide was to be launched. Unquestionably important is Stern's crooked assertion that the Jews and the Nazis' desired New Order shared substantial common interests. Yalin-Mor later summed up the rationale behind his organization's wish to cooperate with the Nazis in the middle of the war. He admitted that Stern's goal of persuading the Jews to emigrate to Palestine was quite consistent with Germany's plans for removing the Jews from Europe.69

At the time the Ankara document was presented, a leading Stern Gang member was Yitzhak Shamir, who would first become Israel's foreign minister, then prime minister, between 1977-1992. Shamir, like his preceptor Menahem Begin, was behind a great many acts of violence against civilians in the 1940s, when he became notorious for his bloody attacks on British and Arab targets.

Shamir's role in the Stern's attempt to ally with the Nazis is unquestionably important. Yet in the many years since the Ankara document was discovered, Shamir answered few questions about it. Nearly everything known about the proposed alliance, however, indicates that he was one of its chief architects.

In 1989, Yitzhak Shamir's past was unveiled to his fellow Israelis for the first time, when the story of the Ankara document was published in a major Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post. The story caused great shock, and for the first time these precarious dealings became the subject of discussion in Israel. On 11 March 1989, the Jerusalem Post's report was reflected in the Turkish press by the daily Zaman, in a report headed "The First Step to the Truth in Israel: Shamir-Nazi Collaboration Revealed." This report in daily Zaman stated that any mention of the Zionist-Nazi collaboration—in other words of the collaboration between certain Zionist leaders and Nazi politicians—had been banned by the State of Israel and not set out in writing until 1989.

Since then, many books have been published dealing with the Ankara document. Yet most of their authors, especially those who are Jewish, treat the Stern-Nazi relationship as an ambiguous historical event. For example, Yehoshafat Harkabi, a retired Israeli colonel, interprets it as an obscure episode in Jewish history in his book Israel's Fateful Hour. Yet the episode is not obscure at all. The only thing that enables such an interpretation is that most people know only of Stern's role in the Nazi-radical Zionist collaboration, and only because the Stern documents have been published. Relations between the Nazis and the WZO remain largely unknown.

Avraham Stern (to the side), who established a new organization with radicals like himself after leaving Irgun, offered the Nazis a military alliance in 1941. Nathan Yalin-Mor (far left) assigned to meet with the Nazis on behalf of Stern, would later explain the logic of this alliance by stating that the project of convincing the Jews to immigrate en masse was in full accord with Germany's aim of cleansing Europe of the Jews.

 

The last episode to be considered in the matter is provided by Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt, who was prominent in the American Jewish circles as a political scientist and who, like Lenni Brenner, was anti-Zionist. By focusing on Adolf Eichmann, Arendt revealed certain previously hidden aspects of the collaboration between Nazis and some radical Zionists.

The Story of Adolf Eichmann

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is one of the most important books on the relations between radical Zionists and Nazis. Ms. Arendt's book relates the trial of the former Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann (or a similar figure), who was kidnapped in Argentina in 1960 by agents of the Mossad, brought to Israel, and put on trial. Eichmann is important because he was the man appointed to solve the Jewish question, under the command of Reinhard Heydrich.

Yitzhak Shamir, one of the leading directors of the Stern organization that offered a military alliance to the Nazis. Right: An identity card that Shamir used during 1940s, when he was searched for his terrorist actions.

Eichmann's was a strange story, and Ms. Arendt brings to light some interesting facts. First of all, she draws attention to the Nürnberg Laws, enacted in 1935, which sought to isolate the Jews from German society. Arendt points out that these laws were congenial to some Jews trying to maintain the homogeneity of the House of Israel, and that the same rules, even if unwritten, still apply in Israel. She reminds us that in Israel, it is forbidden for Jews to marry gentiles.70

In recounting Eichmann's background, Arendt provides remarkable facts about her subject. In his youth, Eichmann was not anti-Semitic and even had close relations with Jews (for just one example Mr. Weiss, general director of the Vacuum Oil Company of Vienna). According to Arendt, Eichmann was interested in Freemasonry and for a time attended the Schlaraffia Lodge.

His main role began in 1934, when he entered the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), a special and secret arm of the SS. The SD, established by SS Heinrich Himmler, operated as an intelligence service under Heydrich's direction. Shortly after joining, Eichmann entered the Jewish affairs section of the SD, and became an expert on "the Jewish question." During that period he made his first contacts with certain Zionist leaders in Germany.71 Arendt tells us that at that time, Eichmann read Der Judenstaat (Jewish State) and was very impressed by it:

… Von Mildenstein … required him to read Theodore Herzl's Der Judenstaat, the famous Zionist classic, which converted Eichmann promptly and forever to Zionism … From then on, as he repeated over and over, he thought of hardly anything but a "political solution" … and how to "get some firm ground under the feet of the Jews" … In order to help this enterprise, he began spreading the gospel among his SS comrades, giving lectures and writing pamphlets … He then acquired a smattering of Hebrew … He even read Adolf Böhm's History of Zionism … and this was perhaps a considerable achievement for a man who, by his own account, had always been utterly reluctant to read anything except newspapers.72

Eichmann was so drawn to Zionism because of the parallels he perceived between the aims of radical Zionists and those of Nazism. Just like the Nazis, some radical Zionists wanted to remove all Jews from the Reich. For the Nazis, that meant judenrein (clear of Jews); for some Zionists, it would lead to a Jewish state.

After being assigned as SD's (Sicherheitsdienst— the security service of the SS) specialist for Jewish emigration, Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann started to take a special interest in radical Zionism. He read the books of various Zionist writers, especially Herzl, and even learned Hebrew. He very much liked the radical Zionists' philosophy and the mission, and became one of the leading architects of the alliance the Nazis established with them.
 

 

What Eichmann called "idealism," and shared with some Zionists, was actually racism. The racists on both sides did not want Jews and Germans to live together. On that, at least, they were in agreement; and that was the rationale for the great assistance the Nazis gave to Jewish immigration to Palestine.

While such close relations were being established with radical Zionists, Eichmann was also organizing actions that would make German Jews uneasy. SD (Sicherheitsdienst), the SS Security Service to which he was affiliated, incited and organized such uprisings as the Kristallnacht, which broke out with the looting of Jewish shops. The aim was to "rescue" Jews from assimilation and convince them to emigrate.

Amidst all this information, we need to recall one important fact: it is the Jews' right to enjoy a homeland of their own, and thus it is perfectly natural for them to want to emigrate to Palestine, the land of their forefathers. Zionism is a legitimate ideology, so long as it supports these Jewish rights within a justified framework. However, some radical Zionists regard these lands as belonging to themselves alone, and plan to occupy other territories in the region as well. To aim at world domination and follow policies with that aim in mind is a violation of the historical facts and of present-day conditions. Palestinian lands are sacred to both Muslims and Christians, just as they are to Jews. Members of all three religions must be able to live there in peace, to perform their religious obligations as they wish, and to enjoy the security they desire. A mentality by which one community utterly disregards another, ignores its basic human rights, and permits it no right to live at all, is unacceptable.

Who could have a better religion than someone who submits himself completely to God and is a good-doer, and follows the religion of Abraham, a man of püre natural belief?... ."(Qur’an, 4: 125)

Chapter Two
The Jewish Holocaust

In 1933, darkness fell over Germany. The Nazi Party had come to power in a nation that for years had been the scene of street brawls, rallies filled with hatred, racist attacks and loud calls for war. Hitler, the Nazis' leader, had won the highest vote in the election and been declared chancellor. He was soon to become Germany's undisputed dictator.

The 13 difficult years from 1933 to 1945 brought ever-increasing savagery. The Nazis began by killing their political opponents, then set about murdering all those innocent handicapped and the mentally ill, whom they saw as being "harmful" according to their twisted theories of eugenics. They began oppressing and torturing Jews and other minorities living in Germany and then, in 1939, turned it into mass killings. The Nazis killed 11 million people in their terrible concentration camps, which turned into genocide machines where technology was systematically employed to sadistically murder babies, the elderly and the sick. Throughout the World War II, which the Nazis began for the sake of their sick ideology, they carried out countless mass killings in the countries they occupied, particularly in eastern nations whose members they perceived as belonging to "inferior races." A total of 55 million people died during that war, at least 30 million of them were innocent civilians killed by the Nazis. In short, between 1933 and 1945 the world was a place of hitherto unseen savagery.

All of mankind has a responsibility to ensure that such murders and genocide never happen again, and that such sick ideas are never again allowed to spread. It is therefore essential that the Nazi barbarities be remembered everywhere in the world, at every available opportunity, that their innocent victims not be forgotten and, of course, that the stupidity and rottenness of the concepts that gave rise to that savagery be fully exposed—as we shall be doing in this chapter.

Nazi Ideology and Its Enemies

The Nazi Party was founded and grew in the 1920s, during which period Hitler and the other senior Nazis came to prominence. Yet the party's ideology definitely had a number of influential predecessors.

The deception of racism was Nazism's basic teaching. Its whole ideology rested on the premise of the superiority of the German race, which was threatened by "inferior races," and in order for that threat to be eliminated, a racist formula needed to be applied. The source of that ideology, in turn, was a 19th-century invention known as "social Darwinism"—nothing other than Darwin's theory of evolution applied to the social sciences. In The Origin of Species, published in 1859, and The Descent of Man, published in 1871, Darwin suggested that living things developed as the result of a "racial struggle," and that nature made strong races superior to others. Darwin rejected the existence of any divine order and harmony in nature, instead advancing the lie that all living things and races were in a constant state of conflict. He also maintained the irrational and illogical idea that the white race, being superior to all others, would soon wipe them off the face of the Earth. Certain circles duly supported that idea for their own ideological reasons, despite the lack of any scientific proof.

Social Darwinism's perverted teachings, which regard human races as different species of animals, consider the use of the toothand- claw force seen among animals as entirely legitimate among human beings.

In Europe, Darwin's theory led to a sudden resurgence of racism among some intellectual circles, who were generally opposed to people living by religious moral values. The British thinker Herbert Spencer adopted Darwin's theory—which had been expressed in more strictly biological terms—to the social sciences, thus giving rise to "social Darwinism." The most ardent supporters of this mistaken idea were the French writer Arthur Gobineau, widely regarded as the father of modern racism, and the British writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who took Gobineau's racist theories to an even higher level of fanaticism. Despite his being a British subject, Chamberlain was a great admirer of all things German. Also an avowed enemy of the Jews, he maintained the deception that the white Aryan race of Indo-European origin was superior to the Middle Eastern Semitic peoples such as Jews and Arabs. He hated the people of Israel, and saw them as inferior to the Germans' pagan ancestors.

Chamberlain died in 1927, but on his death bed, he had a famous visitor: Adolf Hitler, who had formulated his Nazi ideology under the influence of the mistaken ideas of Chamberlain and of similar social-Darwinist ideologues. He took the title of his book Mein Kampf, in which he set out his racist views, from social Darwinism's thesis of "the fight between the races." In Hitler's wicked logic, all of world history had shaped itself around the German race:

1. He believed in the lie that the German race was physically, mentally and culturally superior to all others, and held the idea that the Semitic and Slavic races were particularly inferior. In his view, the German race needed more room to live, which it needed to acquire by eliminating the Semitic and Slavic peoples to the east of Germany—Jews, Poles, and Russians, among others.
2. Hitler attached great importance to the "purity" of the German race. In his perverse thinking, he thought that to maintain that so-called purity, physical precautions were essential (by preventing Germans from marrying people from other races), as well as cultural ones (all "non-German" ideas and beliefs had to be destroyed).
3. His concept of racial purity included such inhumane acts as "improving" the German race, as if it were a breed of animal. To that end, people suffering from inherited diseases needed to be weeded out of society.
4. The destruction of "non-German ideas" meant, in effect, the elimination of all thoughts and beliefs that failed to conform to Nazi ideology. According to the Nazis' beliefs, devout Christians, liberals and members of other religious sects were elements that needed to be disposed of.

Thus the ruthless, racist ideology of social Darwinism gave birth to the worst genocide and slaughter the world had ever seen.

In the following pages, we shall examine the innocent victims of Nazi savagery—first the Jews, the Nazis' main target, and then those other victims of "forgotten genocides," whose sufferings were no less than those of the Jews, but have been largely ignored.

The Footsteps of the Jewish Holocaust

The Nazis systematically repressed those sections of society they regarded as enemies. At the top of their list came the Jews, whom Nazi ideology described as "the source of all evils in the world."

Even before they came to power, the Nazis' street gangs, known as the SA storm-troopers, had already staged attacks on Jewish homes and businesses. Once the Nazis came to power, the SA lost all restraint. An elderly Jew walking on the street or a little Jewish child going to school could easily be assaulted by the SA and other Nazi gangs. That same year, the Nazis initiated a boycott aimed at Jewish shops and businesses. All over Germany went up posters portraying Jews as terrible and ugly monsters, and carrying slogans reading, "Don't buy Jewish goods." In September that same year, a law was passed prohibiting Jews from owning land. In November, Jews were banned from being newspaper editors.

Children in Hitler's Germany were brought up with anti-Semitic teachings. Above: Children learning anti-Jewish slogans.

Further laws were passed in 1934, excluding Jews from trade unions and health insurance, and banning them from working as lawyers or judges. In 1935, all Jews were expelled from the army.

Under the Nürnberg Laws of 1935, Jews were no longer able to work in many areas of German society. Jews were prohibited from marrying Germans. In 1937, Jews were no longer permitted to be teachers, doctors or dentists, on the pretext that "They will physically or spiritually poison the German people." In November that year, the anti-Semitic film The Eternal Jew began to be shown in cinemas all over Germany.

In schools, teachers warned their students of the so-called "Jewish menace." During lessons, Jews were insulted and maligned. The quotation below is a thought-provoking reflection of how Germany's society was brainwashed:

Mr. Birgmann's 7th form is very lively today. The teacher is talking about the Jews. Mr. Birgmann has drawn a number of shapes on the board, and everyone finds these unbelievably fascinating. Mr. Birgmann looks at his watch? "It is mid-day, children. We must now sum up what we have learnt. What were we last speaking about?"

Everyone puts their hand up, and Mr. Birgmann nods to Karl Scholtz, who is sitting in the front row.

"We were learning how to recognise Jews."

"Excellent! Can you tell us a bit more?"

Little Karl rises to his feet and points to the shapes on the blackboard: "It is easy to recognise Jews by their noses. Their noses look like a number '6,' and are called a 'Jewish six.' Some people who are not Jews have big noses, but theirs point upwards, not down. Such noses are called 'hooked' or 'eagle.' They are nothing like Jewish noses."

"Well done!" says the teacher. "Richard, come up and tell us more about how to recognise Jews."

The blond, cheerful Richard approaches the blackboard. "You can tell a Jew by his movements and behaviour. Jews always nod their heads forward. They also have a funny way of walking. They waddle. They move their hands when they talk. They have odd voices, as if they are talking through their noses. They have a nasty, sweet smell. You can always tell a Jew if you have a good sense of smell."

The teacher was quite satisfied.

"There you are, children. Watch out! If you remember all that when you leave school, the Jews will never be able to take you in!"

He turns the blackboard round, and one of the students reads out the poem written on it:

The Devil talks to us
From the face of a Jew.
Let us be free of the Jews,
Who are a plague in every land.
Let us be happy and joyful again.
All young people must fight.
These devils are deceitful!73 

Enmity of Jews increased rapidly in a society educated along such lines. Every Nazi act of repression against the Jews met with society's approval. 1938 saw all Jewish-owned goods, property and money being registered, and new sanctions being imposed.

A new chapter in the oppression of the Jews opened on the night of November 9-10, 1938. The incidents were sparked off on November 7, when a 17-year-old Jewish Pole, Herschel Grynszpan, whose family the Nazis had mistreated, shot an official at the German Embassy in Paris. The Nazis used the incident as an act of provocation, and staged attacks on Jewish places of worship, houses and businesses all over Germany.

The Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, one of the hundreds of synagogues demolished during Kristallnacht, when Jewish homes and shops were looted.

In one single night, 1,350 synagogues were destroyed. More than 90 Jews were killed, and some 30,000 were sent to concentration camps. 7,000 Jewish businesses were looted, and thousands of homes damaged. That night was called "Kristallnacht" (Night of Broken Glass) because of all the windows smashed in the looted buildings. The German government then managed to hold the Jews responsible for all that had gone on, and raised the amazing sum of 1 billion marks from Jews to pay for all the glass that had been broken.

In the wake of Kristallnacht, the oppression increased. When Germany united with Austria in 1938, some 200,000 Austrian Jews continued living in fear along with the 55,000 or so living in Germany, apart from a few Zionists who collaborated with the Nazis. Yet the real savagery started with the outbreak of the war.

The War Years and the Start of the Genocide

Jews in Nazi Germany were forced to sew this symbol onto their clothing, proclaiming their Jewish identity.

On March 15, 1936, Nazi armies invaded Czechoslovakia. On September 1, they invaded Poland. Great Britain and France declared war, and World War II had begun. The invasion of Poland brought a new dimension to the twisted Nazi ideas known as "the Jewish problem." That part of the country under German occupation (the rest was occupied by the Soviet Union) contained more than 1 million Jews. Successive decrees published by the Nazis confined these Jews to ghettoes, or in newly built concentration camps. All Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars of David on their clothes so they could be immediately identified.

Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Gestapo, gave orders for death squads known as SS Einsatzgruppen (SS Special Action Units) to search out Jews in the occupied territories. Death or worse awaited Jews in the ghettoes and the camps.

Toward the autumn of 1940, the Nazi armies occupied Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece. In addition to Italy and Japan—which had already formed an alliance with Germany—Hungary, Romania and Slovakia also declared themselves allies of Germany. The Nazi armies' largest invasion was of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Within 12 weeks, the Germans had taken Kiev, and a month later had approached the outskirts of Moscow.

To sum up, in the first two years of the World War II, Hitler or his allies had captured most of the continent of Europe, from the French coast to Moscow, from Denmark to Greece. Shortly before their collapse in 1945, the Nazis initiated a ruthless genocide campaign in all their occupied regions. First Jews in particular and then—as we shall see—other ethnic and religious groups began to be systematically wiped out. Even after 1944, when it had become clear that Germany would lose the war, the Nazis continued their genocide. During that final stage of the conflict, in fact, the elimination of the Jews—and also of gypsies, Poles and Slavs, all members of the so-called "inferior race"—became the Nazis' principal aim. Hitler knew that he would lose the war, but wanted to eliminate all the Jews first. This genocide had several main "areas of implementation:"

1. Ghettoes: These open-air prisons where Jews were kept were used to kill by degrees.
2. Concentration camps were first established as places where Jews and others were kept as "slave laborers." In early 1942, however, the mass extermination of detainees began. A total of 11 million people (5.5 million Jews, 500,000 gypsies, 3 million Poles, 400,000 handicapped and hundreds of thousands of Russian, Slav and other prisoners of war) were systematically exterminated in these camps.
3. Mass killings in occupied regions: Special German Army units, and particularly the SS Einsatzgruppen responsible for "finding and killing Jews," executed civilians in a great many places.

Life and Death in the Ghettoes

The largest of the ghettoes was that in Warsaw.

Before the Nazis' arrival, Jews made up approximately a third of Warsaw's 1 million inhabitants. Following the Nazi occupation, Jews were transferred in from other areas, increasing their numbers from 330,000 to 450,000. But the Nazis crammed this huge number into a walled area that represented only 2.3 percent of the city. The poorest district was set aside for the Jews, and Jewish residents from all the other parts of the city were moved there forcibly. Before they were put inside, all their money and valuables were taken from them.

Jews who took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising were all put to death en masse. These Jews were murdered shortly after leaving the ghetto. Jews rounded up in the camps were stripped of everything they possessed, including their money.

Life in the ghetto went on under terrible conditions. An average of seven families were crammed into one room. Very little food was given, and everyone lived on the edge of starvation. The buildings were crawling with rodents and insects. Every day, those living in the ghetto could be subjected to slaps, mockery and abuse from the Nazis, who made elderly Jews so weakened that they could barely walk wash the streets with soap and water and laughed at their suffering. People living in the ghettoes were beaten at random, and the Nazis would merrily yank the beards and ringlets of the elderly, which they let grow as a religious obligation. An average of 100 people a day died from hunger, sickness or maltreatment. The photographs of wretched children in the Warsaw ghetto clearly reveal the suffering of these innocents.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews were slaughtered in the Warsaw Ghetto, a place of starvation and poverty.

The memories of one Jew who lived in the Warsaw ghetto reveal the true situation in the city:

The oppression began as soon as the Germans entered the city, with the killing of 34 innocent Jews. The German SS were just looking for excuses to kill Jews. The SS asked a gentile where the Jews were living. He indicated Itzhak Goldfliess' house. The SS entered my friend's house and killed his parents, wife and two children. On the first Sabbath of the occupation, the Germans rounded up all the Jews and ordered them to dig a long, wide ditch in the city centre. They were then told to go home, put their Sabbath clothes on and come back. To the great surprise of everyone, the Jews were then made to line up in that filthy trench. They were made to spend a whole day in it, which was full of sewage. The Germans beat them with sticks, and sometimes allowed the Ukrainians to attack them with sticks and pieces of wood. Whenever anyone tried to get out of the ditch, they would be beaten by German SS officers or Ukrainian civilians and made to get back in.74

In 1942, some 300,000 people from the ghetto died, some from hunger and disease, others in the concentration camps where they were sent. In April 1943, some of the 60,000 or so Jews remaining in the ghetto began a doomed uprising. Even though they had almost no weapons, they fought the Nazis for exactly three weeks. In the end, the Nazis regained control and killed all the Jews they could find. Of the original 500,000 in the ghetto, only a handful of Jews remained alive.

In other ghettos set up by the Nazis, hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed after suffering fear, terrible starvation, and torture.

In 1943, the last Jews remaining in the Warsaw Ghetto initiated an uprising against Nazi oppression, which the Nazis suppressed with terrible bloodshed.

"Final Solution": Setting Up the Concentration Camps

At the beginning of 1942, Hitler and his staff decided on a "Final Solution" to the Jewish problem. That meant the systematic extermination of all Jews, and leaving not one Jew alive in territory controlled by the Nazis.

In accordance with that decision, the concentration camps were turned into extermination camps. Starting with the Jews in Germany, Jews from all the countries occupied by the Nazis began to be transferred to those camps by SS units specially assigned to the task. The official story was that the camps were to employ them as workers. But when they arrived, most were killed at once, and the rest later, after having been used as forced labor.

Even the process of transporting the Jews to the camps reveals the inhuman cruelty the Nazis inflicted. Jewish families were rounded up from their homes or the ghettos at gunpoint, with blows and abuse, and crammed into railway cars that had earlier carried animals or goods. Photographs of the time clearly show the terror on the faces of those forced onto the trains, and the hatred on the faces of the Nazis screaming orders at them. Small children, elderly men barely able to walk and pregnant women were all ruthlessly dragged about with kicks, guns and even whips.

The Nazis carried out mass slaughters in nearly all the lands they occupied.

One Jew who escaped the genocide reveals the horror of the transfer process:

They rounded us up at nine in the morning. When we arrived at Chortkow, it was evening. We had spent the whole day walking in the snow, hungry and with no rest at all. Everyone was dropping from fatigue.

Then they took us to the prison. There we had to pass in front of a SS officer and Ukrainian police officers. Every one had a stick in his hand and was just waiting to hit a Jewish head. There were about 80 of them, and it took a long time for a Jew to pass in front of 80 people, being beaten all the time. I was black and blue and covered in blood by the time I was thrown into my cell. Did the Germans want to kill us, or were they just enjoying themselves?

After that incident, I was squeezed into a tiny cell containing 60 other people. There was no room to sit or lie down. We had to remain standing, crammed together, dripping with blood, hungry, thirsty and in pain …

We were sure they would take us out in the morning and give us something to eat. But we were mistaken. Nothing changed in the morning. We spent the whole of the second day, and even that night, standing and packed together …

Many people began to murmur the Shema Israel prayer, that is recited before death. At that moment the Germans opened the door and took us all out of the cells. Everyone was trying to move his body and breathe deeply... Later, one of the German soldiers began throwing us bits of bread, as if he were throwing food to stay dogs. People threw themselves on the bread like animals, cramming it into their mouths before anyone else could get hold of it. They had filled a trough full of water, and we all drank out of it like cattle. Just when we had started drinking, a soldier came and started beating us: "Come on, move it!" …

They made us run from the prison to the train station about a kilometre away. The Germans did what they wanted with the sticks in their hands. You could find yourself on the ground at any moment, from a blow to the back of the neck or a kick to the stomach. That is why, weak as we were, we tried to run as fast as we could. When we reached the train station, we saw cattle trucks on the line. There were no steps or ramps leading up to the doors. The SS troopers therefore beat the first arrivals and told them "Bend down! Bend down!" in order to form steps for those coming behind to use as steps and board the wagons …

When the Germans thought they had filled the wagons with enough people, they threw a few loaves of bread in and shut the doors. We heard them locking us in from the outside. At that time, we had heard nothing about the death camps of Auschwitz or Majdanek in my town. We had no idea what the "Final Solution" was. We thought the Germans wanted to use the Jews as beasts of burden. We knew nothing about their extermination plans.75

The Trains

To carry detainees to the concentration camps, dozens of men, women, children and old people were packed into small freight cars, locked in without even the chance to breathe any fresh air, and left without food and water for days during the journey. Many died of hunger, thirst or being unable to breathe in those terrible conditions, of which even a few minutes would be unbearable. The others had to carry on with their journey, even though the corpses of their loved ones were lying right beside them.

Jews expelled from their homes en masse were transported to the death camps in packed trains.

One who experienced those dreadful conditions gives eyewitness details of the Nazi savagery:

The police were waving their guns about and firing into the air, forcing more people to cram themselves into the already packed wagons. The gunfire continued, and the whole crowd was pushed forward. Those nearest the train were being crushed under the unbelievable pressure from behind... There was nothing those people in the front could do about it, and they responded with painful moaning to those people who were pulling their hair and clothes for support, biting their shoulders, necks and faces, breaking bones and screaming. Despite the fact that the wagons were much fuller than their normal capacity, a few men, women and children were still able to get in. Then, the police came and closed the gates in the faces of people who were almost being squeezed back through the bars.

Before cramming 120 Jews like sardines into the cattle wagons, the Germans covered the floors with 7 cm of burning lime. That was usually used in construction work, and burned if it touched the skin. That resulted in hundreds of Jews dying before they even got to Belzec …

The floor of the wagons was covered in a thick, white powder. That was burning lime. Bare skin that came into contact with it immediately dried up and burned. The people inside were literally burning to death. The flesh on their bones was melting away. The lime was meant to stop the spread of disease.

There were two buckets in each component. One contained water, the other was to be used as a toilet, if that was possible in all the pushing and shoving.76

After days of travel in such terrible conditions, the final destination was death camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek and Belsen:

The Germans were shouting "Los schnell, Quick!" They were hitting us with sticks and rifles. Since there were no steps or ramps, we had to jump off the trains from a height of a metre, or a metre and a half. We tried to get up as quickly as we could in order to avoid being kicked by the German soldiers waiting there. We were starving, thirsty and weakened. Even so, we were made to run the 2 kilometres to the labour camp once the wagons had been emptied. Some people were weeping from fear, others from relief. We were so caught up we took no notice of our surroundings. When we reached the camp, the whole group fell silent. We looked and listened with great care. The whole area was unbelievably quiet. The silence of death hung over the camp in front of us.77

Before even reaching the camps, many people on the trains died, either from being crushed or suffocated.

The Death Camps

In the camps where the worst Nazi savagery was carried out, some 11 million people lost their lives, proving how monstrous and ruthless people who turn away from religious moral values and silence the voice of their consciences can be.

They were first set up as "labor camps." Almost all, and Auschwitz in particular, were opened alongside major industrial complexes, and detainees brought there were forced to serve the German war industry as slave labor. Yet the malignant Nazi ideology did not restrict itself to that "pragmatic" oppression, but also turned them into sites for "the elimination of unwanted races." During the three years or so between the last months of 1941 and the end of 1944, a total of 11 million people, of whom 5.5 million were Jews, were killed in gas chambers and by other means, or else died of starvation, disease and mistreatment. The Nazis had not the slightest compassion for infants, innocent children, the old and wretched, the handicapped and the sick, but set about their extermination with sadistic brutality.

The cruelty and oppression in death camps such as Auschwitz, to be found all over Europe, had seldom been equaled in history.

There is still a debate as to whether or not Zyklon B gas was used in the camps, but how these innocent people were slaughtered changes nothing. Whatever method was employed, millions of innocent people were ruthlessly put to death. Nazi savagery and the Jewish holocaust are facts. The human corpses and living skeletons observed when the camps were liberated by Allied troops are sufficient proof of the unbelievable tragedy that occurred.

This genocide began when detainees set foot in the camps. The "life" considered fitting for these people was actually a slow death. In his memoirs, one Jewish prisoner who survived the Kamionka camp describes the "living standards":

In the Belsen camp, some 10,000 unburied bodies were found.

When I walked through the camp gates, I saw some terrible sights. German soldiers were watching us from the towers with machine guns in their hands. Everyone inside, up to 50 Russians, 100 Poles and maybe 1,000 Jews, were all in a terrible condition. Everyone wore a 5 x 5 cm piece of cloth. Those of the Russians and Poles were red, and the Jews' ones yellow. They were all so emaciated, they were half dead. They wandered about the filthy garden as if sleep-walking.

With most of them, their bodies were still alive, but their souls were dead. Our group halted at the entrance. There was a tall German soldier in front of us. He kept watching us. He cleared his throat before addressing us: "Hand over your watches, valuables and jewelry! You will be shot at once if anything is found on you." Looking at his filthy face and powerful weapon, I realized I had no alternative but to comply. I took my watch off, and as I was looking for loose change in my pockets, the Germans began slapping us, or hitting us in the stomach with their sticks. They never stopped that sadistic form of entertainment …

That first night, we were taken to the barracks after drinking a mug of "soup." It is hard to describe the wretchedness of that place. It had actually been built for animals, and the only concession made for human beings was that unfinished bunk-beds of two to three rows had been added. The wind came in through cracks in the walls. Everywhere was jumping with fleas, and they were all over us within a few days! I soon got used to living with them. Even though they carried typhus, the fleas were of little importance compared to the other problems in the camp …

After being awoken at five, they gave us two minutes to get dressed. Anyone who was not ready was beaten. Once everybody was ready, we could join the queue for a mug of coffee. Actually, what they called water was just a disgusting hot water. They gave us a slice of bread, too. A hard, stale bread, made of flour and sand that was difficult to eat... Since that was all we were given to eat all day, some people concealed part of their bread for "lunch," although others were unable to resist, and ate it all at once. I used to keep part back for the rest of the day. I knew that we would be worked all day, that all my physical strength would go, and that my hunger would get even worse.78

In any of the other concentration camps, living standards were no different. Those forced to work were shown no pity or compassion, and lived like slaves, suffering the threats and whims of sadistic Nazi officers, worn out by hunger, exhaustion, and torture.

In some camps, even worse things were done to prisoners, such as the experiments carried out by the monster Josef Mengele, the doctor at Auschwitz, the largest camp, where some 1.5 million people were killed. Mengele performed terrible experiments on adult and children "guinea pigs" chosen from among the prisoners, to see how much pain or cold the human body could withstand. People were forced into water full of chunks of ice on freezing winter days, to see how long they could survive. Mengele is also known to have carried out surgical operations with no anesthetic, amputating his subjects' arms and legs and opening their abdomens.

In the death camps, Josef Mengele (right) performed barbaric experiments on people he selected as guinea pigs (left)..

Mengele's cruelest experiments were those performed on twins who arrived at the camp. He used to separate them from the other prisoners, and perform unbelievably ghastly experiments on them to estimate the effects of inherited features. He injected twins with each others' blood and measured the effects, as one or both would generally suffer terrible pains and high temperatures. Mengele wanted to determine whether inherited eye color could be altered or not, and injected ink into twins' eyes. Almost all of them suffered terribly, and many went blind. Small children were injected with various diseases, to see how long they could survive. Many innocent children were tortured by Mengele, and were left crippled or dead.

The dreadful barbarity in the camps came to light only at the end of the war when the Allies defeated the Nazis and took control of the areas containing the camps. The British, American and Soviet units were shocked by the sights that greeted them. One record from the British unit that liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp reads:

This is the famous Belsen concentration camp,
liberated by the British on April 15, 1945.
10,000 unburied corpses were found here.
13,000 people died between then and now.
They were all victims of the German "New Order" in Europe,
And each one an example of Nazi culture.

Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads

Apart from the ghettoes and the concentration camps, another element of the holocaust was the Einsatzgruppen teams, or death squads set up by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Gestapo, by authority Hitler gave him in the wake of the invasion of Poland. These special units moved into occupied territory behind the regular army, to seek out groups to be exterminated. The Jews headed that list. After Poland, Einsatzgruppen teams conducted house-to-house searches for Jews in occupied Soviet territory, and executed anyone they found, making no exceptions for women or children.

The first thing that German units invading Poland did was to hunt down Jews in every village, town and city.

The "success rates" sent by Einsatzgruppen commanders to Berlin reveal the scale of the slaughter. According to their own figures, they shot more than 1 million Jews in Nazi-occupied regions, particularly Poland and Ukraine. When it entered a town, an Einsatzgruppe (the singular form of the noun) rounded up all the Jews, then moved them all out and made them dig a huge hole that would become their mass grave. They then shot all the prisoners and threw them in. Some who were not yet dead suffocated when earth was piled on top of them.

Following the occupation of Kiev on September 19, 1941, the slaughter of the Jews there may give an idea of the barbarity that the Einsatzgruppen practiced. On September 29, they called the Jews to a cemetery in the outskirts of the city, and announced that they were to be "resettled." They were ordered to bring with them food, warm clothing, documents, money and valuables-which prevented any from realizing this was to be a massacre. A Ukrainian officer who collaborated with the Nazis and was later tried described the incident stating:

It was like a mass migration… the Jews sang religious songs on the way.” At the railroad siding their food and belongings were taken from them and: Then the Germans began shoving the Jews into new, narrower lines. They moved very slowly. After a long walk, they came to a passageway formed by German soldiers with truncheons and police dogs. The Jews were whipped through. The dogs went at those who fell but the pressure of the surging lines behind was irresistible, and the weak and injured were trod underfoot. Bruised and bloodied, … the Jews emerged onto a grassy clearing. They had arrived at Babi Yar; ahead of them lay the ravine. The ground was strewn with clothing. Ukrainian militiamen, supervised by Germans, ordered the Jews to undress. Those who balked, who resisted, were assaulted, their clothes ripped off…  Screams and hysterical laughter filled the air.79

Then the Jews were all shot, and their bodies flung into the valley. Records show that some 33,700 people were killed that day.

The executions by the Einsatzgruppen teams are generally ignored by those "revisionists" who deny that the Holocaust ever happened. They tend to focus their claims on the technical capacities of the gas chambers or on the function of Zyklon B, and ignore what went on in the ghettoes and the Einsatzgruppen's murders. Yet the very existence of such teams is sufficient to demonstrate that the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews, and actually set about doing so. Any regime that executes innocents, even women and children, and sets up special teams to carry out those killings, is quite clearly capable of doing similar things in concentration camps.

The Nazis' Hatred of Religion

When evaluating the Jewish Holocaust, one important question begs to be asked: Why did the Nazis hate the Jews so much?

The answer lies in their wicked ideology. As pointed out in this book's introduction, Nazism can be described as an imprudent neo-pagan movement. Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Rosenberg felt great nostalgia for Germany's pre-Christian pagan culture, whose basic feature was the admiration of pride, violence and war. The moral concept of Christianity, which stressed humility, peace and compassion—was diametrically opposed to that culture. Their hatred of Christianity was born with Nietzsche, continued with his disciple Martin Heidegger, and reached a peak with Hitler and Rosenberg, who inherited their false ideas.

The Nazis, hostile to religious moral values, targeted Jewish religious values in particular. Right: A Torah scroll, the sacred text of Judaism. Hundreds of scriptural texts were burned during the Nazi regime.

One natural consequence of hatred of Christianity was enmity towards Jews, because Christianity is a religion born out of Judaism, and the Nazis regarded Christianity as "the invasion of Europe by Jewish culture." The Old Testament of the Christian Bible begins with the Torah, the holy book of Judaism. Christians love and respect all the Jewish prophets; and Prophet Jesus and his disciples were ethnically Jewish. All these elements led to the Nazis viewing Christianity as "a Jewish conspiracy." In addition to that ethnic hatred, the Nazis added a social-Darwinist perspective that regarded the Jews as an inferior race, that formulated an implacably fanatical loathing.

The memoirs of Jews subjected to Nazi fanaticism contain passages that show the Nazis' "hatred of religion." The best examples are how the Nazis attacked the Jews' religious symbols, distinctive garments, and long hair and beards, which they allowed to grow out of religious belief. Members of the SS and other Nazi groups stopped many devout Jews, especially the elderly, in the streets and cut off their beards and ringlets, symbols of their faith. They burned and tore up Jewish holy books. A Jewish eyewitness described one incident in the Warsaw ghetto:

As I was returning home one afternoon, I saw a group of young men lined up along a wall with the hands in the air. What was happening? I drew a bit closer. What had those boys done? Why had the Germans lined them up in that manner?

An SS officer with black boots and a riding crop was standing there. He reminded me of a dog trainer getting his kicks from watching the suffering of the creature in front of him. Another SS man had scissors in his hand, and was trying to cut the beards of those bleeding, pain-filled faces.80

Particularly noteworthy is the following account from a Jew who worked in the concentration camps:

… We plunged our rakes into the mud, and were astonished at their weight as we tried to pull them out again. The mud dropped from between the teeth of the rakes as we approached the handcart, and very little was left. We would bend down again to get another thick bit of mud. Again very little remained by the time we got to the cart. Again and again we strained our weakened bodies. I observed my companions as we performed that disgusting, illogical and hopeless task, and a tragic scene came to my mind: The Jewish slaves who built the city of Pharaoh in Egypt …

It is significant that some Jews who survived these atrocities compared the Nazis to Pharaoh. The Nazis' hatred of religion was actually a new example of the savagery demonstrated by many atheist despots throughout history, such as Pharaoh, Nimrod and Nero. The Nazis tried to eliminate everyone who refused to accept their ideology, particularly devout individuals including Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as Jews. (In the pages that follow, we shall look at these in more detail.)

Jews condemned to death in Poland

The account continues:

Jews were forced to work at the edge of starvation. Their daily food intake consisted of a slice of black bread the size of a man's thumb, a small pat of margarine, and a bowl of liquid alleged to be soup. Sometime there might be a few bits of something floating on the surface. That is all they got for 24 hours.

Primitive gallows were set up. Six young men were standing on the platform. The hangman was putting the nooses around their necks. I thought I recognised two of the young men. Were they not the Spielman brothers? Yes, it was really them! This was their "lighter" punishment.

Orders for everyone to look were coming from all sides. "This is what happens to those who try to escape!" I shuddered.

One of the Spielman brothers suddenly started talking. He was defying the Nazis, and proudly looking death in the face: "You can kill us, and eliminate thousands of Jews. But you will never destroy the Jewish nation. They will survive as always…"

They then began to say the Shema Israel prayer, and were able to murmur "There is one God …" before they died.81

The Radical Zionists During the Holocaust

It is a duty of every person of good conscience to unreservedly condemn that genocide to which the Jews were subjected during the World War II, one of the most terrible acts of barbarity in history.

Yet it is startling that some who were Jews themselves, rather than oppose that savagery, actually collaborated with the Nazis responsible for it. As we saw in this book's first chapter and as historical records prove, radical Zionists entered a dirty pact with the Third Reich to set up a Jewish state in Palestine, supporting the Nazis even during the years of the Holocaust, and made not the slightest attempt to rescue Jews from the Nazi atrocities.

The Polish Zionist leader Yitzhak Gruenbaum

In Zionism in the Age of Dictators, the American Jewish historian Lenni Brenner writes that assimilationist Jewish organizations did their best to rescue the Jews from Nazi-occupied territories. As Brenner emphasizes, however, some Zionists had no interest in rescuing Jews from the Nazis' grip, and even obstructed certain rescue efforts. Brenner writes that while their relatives were being slaughtered, many Jews were offended by the WZO's indifferent attitude and cried out for action.82 In an article he wrote in 1943, the Polish Zionist leader Izak Gruenbaum described the accusations directed at some Zionists in this regard, and made his reply:

And this time in Eretz Yisrael, there are comments: "Don't put Eretz Yisrael in priority in this difficult time, in the time of destruction of European Jewry." I do not accept such a saying. And when some asked me: "Can't you give money from the Keren Hayesod to save Jews in the Diaspora?", I said: "no!" And again I say no… I think we have to stand before this wave that is putting Zionist activity into the second row... And because of this, people called me an anti-Semite, and concluded that I am guilty, because we do not give priority to rescue actions.83

At the end of his article, Gruenbaum concluded that "Zionism is above all."

The radical Zionists' rationale was evident: According to them, trying to rescue European Jews would betray Zionism. Using all their resources to found a Jewish state in Palestine, they made it very clear that they would make no move to save European Jews from Nazi persecution.

How could they behave so ruthlessly towards their own people? A letter written by Nathan Schwalb, the Swiss representative of the Zionist HeChalutz organization, gives a strong hint as to the answer:

After their victory they will divide the world again between the nations, as they did at the end of World War I. Then they unveiled the plan for the first step and now, at the war's end, we must do everything so that Eretz Yisrael will become the state of Israel, and important steps have already been taken in this direction. About the cries coming from your country, we should know that all the Allied nations are spilling much of their blood, and if we do not sacrifice any blood, by what right shall we merit coming before the bargaining table when they divide nations and lands at the war's end?… for only with blood shall we get the land.>84

In short, some Zionists believed that mass extermination of the Jews would justify their desire to establish a state in Palestine after the war. For that reason, they made no effort to save the Jews of Europe from the Holocaust.

There is considerable evidence for this. For example, Stephen Wise, the leader of the Zionist movement in America, vigorously opposed the activities of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, founded by assimilationist Jews and crusaders for human rights, and which worked to transfer Jews from Nazi-occupied territories to safe havens. Wise acted as he did so because the Jews who were to be rescued were headed for somewhere other than Palestine. Peter Bergson, one of the rescue committee's executives frustrated by Wise's opposition, said: "If you were inside a burning house, would you want the people outside to scream 'Save them,' or to scream 'Save them by taking them to the Waldorf Astoria'?"85

In short, certain Zionist leaders clearly betrayed those of their own people who suffered under Nazi savagery. Today, Jews who oppose radical Zionism also demand an explanation for that betrayal.

Some Zionists' Exploitation of the Holocaust

The Jewish Holocaust is a human tragedy that must never be forgotten or underestimated, and must be seen as an open wound for all of mankind, not just the Jews.

Exploiting the Holocaust for political or economic ends, and using it as a propaganda tool are completely unacceptable, however. That would be a betrayal of the victims, especially when those who do so are radical Zionists who once collaborated with the Nazis.

From official Israeli statements, it is well known that since 1967, Israel has occupied Arab lands and moreover, has maintained that occupation with the most ruthless methods, and engaged in a long-term policy of oppression against the Palestinian people. The United Nations has issued many resolutions critical of Israel's attitude.

In order to compensate for that policy and win the sympathy of the world, Israel sometimes relies on the Holocaust. Some radicals use the tragedy of the 5.7 million European Jews murdered by the Nazis to supposedly minimize Israel's own crimes.

This method is employed not only by some circles at the Israeli administration, but by a number of "Israeli lobbies" in Western countries. That comes in for considerable criticism from those Jews who take a more honest view of the situation. For instance, Esther Benbassa, director of the Modern Jewish Studies course at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in France, stated in an article in the September 11, 2000, edition of Liberation that, "The Jewish Holocaust has been turned into a religion." She continued: "Putting themselves in the position of a victim secures every Jew from criticism, and thus also protects Israel from criticism."86

Cover of the book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, by Norman Finkelstein (right)

The most important study emphasizing how the Jewish Holocaust had been turned into a political and economic propaganda tool was the 2000 book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Norman G. Finkelstein, a historian from New York University, himself of Jewish origin. Finkelstein's own grandmother was sent to a Nazi concentration camp. He describes how the concept of the Holocaust has literally been exploited by both Israel and Jewish organizations in the West.

As a result of the judgments made by international tribunals set up after the World War II, Germany paid compensation to Jewish victims of Nazi oppression—billions of dollars in compensation in installments to Israel and Jews in different countries for decades, and is still doing so. Various other European countries as well, especially Switzerland, whose international banks constitute a financial empire, and Eastern European countries who failed to assist the Jews under Nazi occupation, have paid "compensation" many times.

In his book The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein explains how, in the use of that compensation, enormous corruption abounds; how lots of money received from the German and other governments for distribution to Jewish victims of the Nazis is actually used to finance radical Zionist organizations instead of going to the intended recipients.

Recently, for instance, Jewish organizations demanded a new payment from Germany as "compensation for the Jews forced to work as slave laborers in the Nazi camps," giving the number of Jews who should profit from that as 135,000. Based on official figures, however, Finkelstein gives the number of surviving Jews forced to work in the camps as fewer than 18,000. The remaining difference is transferred to the coffers of some Zionist organizations under the name of "compensation."87

Similar criticism of such exploitation is made in the book Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler, How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold, by Tim Cole, an official at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In that book, published in 1999, Cole describes how the Holocaust has been turned into a commercial merchandise, and fiercely criticizes the phenomenon.

Conclusion

This chapter examined the main outlines of the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Hundreds of books could certainly be written on that subject, giving details of the Nazi savagery. Yet even the information summarized here is enough to demonstrate that the Holocaust was one of the most terrible events in history.

We need to be cautious on one point, however. Some people are trying to exploit that terrible event and use it for their own political and economic ends. They have absolutely no right to do so, since they are the very ones who fanned the flames of anti-Semitism by collaborating with the Nazis all through the 1930s, and abandoning the Jews of Europe when the genocide began. These radical Zionists hope to use one act of genocide to justify another—the ethnic cleansing being carried out by Israel in Palestine. And that is totally unacceptable.

To demonstrate the invalidity of the radical Zionists' propaganda, two things need to be done:

1. To reveal the collaboration between the Nazis and some Zionists
2. To stop the genocide carried out during World War II from being used as a means of exploitation and to place it in its proper context in history.

The first chapter of this book considered the details of the Nazi-radical Zionist collaboration. In this, the second, we dealt with the genocide perpetrated during World War II. But to understand the historical facts and stop the matter from being employed as a means of exploitation, another vital fact needs to be made clear: The Jews were not the Nazis' only victims.

Chapter Three
The Forgotten Holocausts

Heading the list of the errors made by some who describe the Holocaust is the way they ignore the Nazis' other victims, apart from the Jews. The Nazis didn't restrict their campaign of genocide to Jews alone, but also included such ethnic groups as Gypsies, Poles and Slavs, the mentally and physically handicapped, and religious communities such as the Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses. This chapter shall examine the "forgotten holocausts" waged against these groups, which are generally totally neglected.

Savagery Against the Wretched: The Genocide of the Handicapped

Most people think that the Nazi Holocaust began with the slaughter of the Jews. Actually though, before the Jews, another group was subjected to Nazi murder: The mentally and physically handicapped and those with hereditary diseases in German society. In his book The Origins of Nazi Genocide, the historian Henry Friedlander writes:

In the postwar world, Auschwitz has come to symbolize genocide in the twentieth century. But Auschwitz was only the last, most perfect Nazi killing center. The entire killing enterprise had started in January 1940 with the murder of the most helpless human beings, institutionalized handicapped patients.88

According to the theory of eugenics practiced in Nazi Germany, the physically and mentally handicapped were seen as an obstacle to the development of society. This perverted view led to the slaughter of thousands of the handicapped and elderly.

In order to understand the reason behind that, we need to look at Nazi ideology, which was based on racism. One of racism's practical applications was the false theory of "eugenics," which foresaw the "improvement" of the human race in the same way as an animal species is improved, through selective breeding. First, the Nazis decided to eliminate the handicapped and those with hereditary diseases, which they felt would "damage the race."

The concept of eugenics was born with Darwin's theory of evolution. In his book The Origin of Species, Darwin consistently referred to the improvement of species, and in The Descent of Man he put forward the lie that mankind was just another species of animal. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton took his erroneous claims another step further, and formulated the theory of eugenics.

Galton's 1869 book Heredity Genius discussed a number of so-called "geniuses" in British history, and put forward the mistaken idea that they possessed particular racial characteristics. Following that claim, Galton suggested that British blood was genetically superior to that of other nations, and that steps needed to be taken to protect it. In his twisted view, that theory applied to all races, not just to the British.

After Galton, the concept of eugenics' fiercest advocate was the German Darwinist biologist Ernst Haeckel, accepted as one of the Nazis' ideological forefathers. Haeckel was the first to speak openly of the brutal killing for eugenic purposes. In his book Wonders of Life, he maintained the inhumane idea that "handicapped babies need to be killed with no loss of time," and claimed that this would not constitute murder, since those babies were not yet conscious.89 Also, as part of the "laws of evolution," Haeckel wanted to kill all those sick and handicapped who might hold back the so-called evolution of society. He opposed giving them medical treatment which, he argued, only prevented natural selection:

Hundreds of thousands of incurable people, for instance the mentally ill, lepers, and those suffering from cancer are being artificially kept alive, yet that brings no advantage to them or to society in general... In order to be freed from this evil, these patients must be given a quick-acting and effecting poison, by decision and under the observation of an authorised commission.90

This barbarity theorized by Haeckel was to be put into practice by Nazi Germany.

As committed practitioners of the deception of social Darwinism, the Nazis adopted the theory of eugenics in that same form. The Forgotten Crimes report, by the Disability Rights Advocates organization, describes the mass murder of the sick and handicapped by the Nazis, and sets out their monstrous view of these innocent people:

Dr. Karl Brandt, who maintained that handicapped babies should be murdered as soon as they were born.

Instead of accepting disability as an aspect of life in all societies, German [Nazi] ideology considered disability to be a sign of degeneracy and viewed nearly any disabled person as a "life not worthy of life." People with all kinds of disabilities, depression, retardation, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, cancer, mobility impairments, "slow learners," deafness and blindness were labeled as "useless eaters." People with disabilities were the first victims of Hitler's efforts to create a master race; the elimination of people with disabilities was a central component of the Nazis' plan to "purify" the Aryan race.91

The first stage of the Nazis' campaign to eliminate the handicapped was sterilization. Between 1933 and the start of World War II in 1939, that policy was enforced with total ruthlessness. Hundreds of thousands of handicapped people were rounded up from hospitals, clinics or their homes, sent to "sterilization centers" and forcibly operated on. As a result of these clumsy operations, a good many patients died, and the majority suffered terrible pain for months. Furthermore, for many years, most were unable to recover from the psychological damage thus inflicted. One study carried out after the war showed that some sterilization victims still suffered violent pains up to ten years after the event, and that a third still suffered psychological trauma.92

Following sterilization, the murder of the handicapped began, by an order issued by Hitler to his staff, known as order Aktion T-4:

Hitler's strategy progressed phase by phase. First there was sterilisation. From 1933 onward, more than 400,000 handicapped people were forcibly sterilised… Then the official murder program known as Aktion T-4 began. That program had been specially designed with the handicapped in mind. The methods of extermination that the Nazis would use on their Jewish victims, for instance the gassing of people forced into the "shower rooms," were first developed under the handicapped people program. As a result, more than 275,000 people were killed in the framework of the Aktion T-4 program. That figure does not include those handicapped people who lost their lives in the camps after Aktion T-4 had come to an end. During the war, an unknown number of other handicapped people were killed in regions invaded and occupied by the Nazis. As the areas under their control expanded, the Nazis murdered handicapped men, women and children, without regard to race, religion or political opinions.93

Doctors and many other public officials brainwashed by Nazi propaganda thought it was their duty to carry out that unbelievable barbarity. The spread of Social Darwinist teachings, which themselves formed the very essence of Nazism, naturally led to the loss of such moral virtues as compassion and mercy, as commanded by religious moral values. The following extract describes an incident in Hadamar, one of the six centers set up to kill the handicapped under Aktion T-4, and reveals to what level Nazi ideology had brought German society:

For example, the slaughter of the handicapped at Hamadar (one of the six main killing centres), took place with bureaucratic regularity and "productivity." It was considered most important to keep morale at high levels for the success of this operation. In order to keep both "productivity" and the morale of the hospital staff at the highest possible level, the administrators frequently emphasised the importance of the program. In the summer of 1941, a ceremony held in the lobby of the right wing of Hadamar formed a milestone in the killing program. All hospital staff attended, and were offered [drink]… After the introductory festivities, all those in attendance were invited down into the hospital basement and participated in the ceremony to mark the "cremation of the 10,000th patient." The corpse was festooned with flowers and small Nazi flags, and one of the doctors made a short and emotional speech confirming the importance of the work being done in Hadamar. The body was then burned, and some of those present made mocking speeches "in memory of the dead." The others listened and laughed, and a party was then held to the accompaniment of polka music.94

The massacre of handicapped children and babies was a tragedy all of its own. Although "work" had been proceeding in that direction since 1933, the real impetus was given on August 18, 1939 by the Reich Committee for Scientific Research into Serious Illness of Hereditary and Protonic Origin. Under a "child euthanasia" decree, the Committee was to be notified of all newborn babies, and children under the age of three, suspected of having serious hereditary diseases. The "serious diseases" in question included Down's Syndrome, physical deformities, and paralysis. Those babies "reported" as being suspected of having such diseases were subjected to medical tests. If confirmed, their documents were marked with a "+", and they were sent to the death centers. One of the Nazi doctors of the time, Dr. Karl Brandt, said, "The aim behind rounding up such babies was to kill them as quickly as possible after birth." Thirty child euthanasia departments were opened in hospitals across Germany, and hundreds of babies are known to have been murdered in each and every one.

Babies were sometimes killed by poison injected into their hearts. Some Nazi doctors behaved even more monstrously, however, and simply allowed them to starve to death. One of these, Dr. Hermann Pfannmuller, is reported to have held one starving baby by the heels, saying, "This one has a few days left."95

The Nazis branded those suffering from depression, the crippled, cancer sufferers, the mentally ill, the deaf and blind—all kinds of handicapped people—as "useless eaters." This twisted ideology is still continued by neo-Nazis today.

One of the worst aspects of this barbarity is the way that it has been "forgotten" to a large extent. The report by the Disability Rights Advocates organization stresses the fact:

In spite of greatly heightened interest in the Holocaust in recent years, silence has surrounded the mass atrocities inflicted on men, women and children with disabilities under the Nazi regime. The vicious and systemic persecution of people with disabilities during the Nazi era has been overlooked and greatly underestimated in historical research and our collective remembrance of the Holocaust. The result is widespread public ignorance of these horrors – an ignorance often perpetuated by the indifference of politicians, academicians and the media. Moreover, restitution measures have been virtually non-existent.

Some people erroneously believe that the number of victims with disabilities is relatively small. However, ample evidence shows that people with disabilities were subjected to slave labor, were looted, plundered, and otherwise exploited, both within Germany and in the territories conquered by the Nazis. In every way that other victims, such as the Jews, suffered and lost, people with disabilities suffered and lost...

... [However,] no memorial center or museum specifically for survivors with disabilities exists anywhere in the world today... Moreover, although there are literally hundreds of Holocaust memorials internationally, it is exceedingly rare for any of them to give more than a passing reference to people with disabilities. Most do not even mention the horrors inflicted on disabled people during the Holocaust.96

In short, the "genocide of the handicapped" that formed one important dimension of Nazi barbarity has been largely forgotten. One of the dangerous results is a loss of sensitivity to the subject, and the neo-Nazis who dream of resurrecting the Nazi system are trying to take advantage of that gap. Moreover, the twisted Social Darwinist logic that underpins that negative view of the handicapped still prevails, making the situation even more serious. The Disability Rights Advocates report Forgotten Crimes (which would later be published as a book) makes it clear that "hostility towards the handicapped" is, sadly, still influential in Germany:

... where many people with disabilities are treated as second-class citizens and are viewed as economic burdens and inconveniences. Discriminatory attitudes have resulted in acts of targeted violence, including public taunts, insults, harassment, attacks, beatings and killings. Neo-Nazis ("skinheads") have led the abuse. Reports show that skinheads have beaten a blind man to death, severely beaten five deaf boys, thrown a wheelchair-using man down subway stairs, and shouted taunts such as "They must have forgotten you in Dachau," and "Under Hitler, you would have been gassed." The Journal of the British Council of Organizations of Disabled People reports that as many as 1000 disabled German citizens have been physically or verbally harassed in a single year.97

These painful facts lead us to an important conclusion. The genocide of the handicapped must never be forgotten, and with regard to them, slogans such as "Never again" must also be fixed in peoples' minds. To protect the rights of the handicapped, a much more effective strategy must be implemented worldwide.

The Gypsy Genocide

The Nazis' racist ideology also placed the Gypsies in the category of the so-called "inferior races that need to be eliminated." When the Nazis came to power, a policy of repression against Gypsies living in Germany began to be implemented. With their artistic abilities and individual lifestyle, Gypsies are welcomed in many countries as an important cultural element, but in Nazi Germany became the targets of an inhuman hatred.

In a statement issued in 1936, Dr. Hans Globke, one of the drafters of the Nürnberg Laws, stated that Gypsies were a foreign race. A decree published on December 14, 1937, described them as "incorrigible criminals," and decided they should be isolated from German society. From the beginning of 1938, Nazi officials began to round them up and send them to concentration camps. Later, in her doctoral thesis, Eva Justin of the German Health Ministry's Racial Research Department described the Gypsies as "a great danger to the purity of the German race." The Buchenwald camp set up a special section for Gypsies. Most of those sent to the Mauthausen, Gusen, Dautmergen, Natzweiler and Flossenburg camps died there.

Above: Prisoners in the Buchenwald death camp. Among them is the Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel. Thousands of Gypsies, as well as Jews, were slaughtered in this camp.

Gypsies were also subjected to a program of forced sterilization. Gypsy women married to non-Gypsy men were forcibly sterilized in operations at a hospital in Düsseldorf-Lierenfeld. Some died during sterilization, and most of the pregnant women so operated on lost their lives.98

In 1938, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and second most senior figure in the Nazi hierarchy, personally took over the "Gypsy problem," and transferred the Gypsy Affairs center from Munich to Berlin. From then on, the elimination of the Gypsies, like that of the Jews, would be one of Nazi Germany's aims.

The mass destruction began in the summer of 1941. At that time, Special Einsatzgruppen teams were set up to find Gypsies and kill them or send them to the camps. Tens of thousands of Gypsies (including women, the elderly, children and infants) were sent from Germany to Poland, and from there to the Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and Majdanek concentration camps. Some 30,000 Gypsies from Holland, France and Belgium were sent to Auschwitz. The great majority were killed by the Nazis. According to Dr. Franciszek Piper, director of the Auschwitz Museum History Department, "23,000 gypsies were transferred to Birkenau [a part of Auschwitz], of whom 21,000 were killed." As Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss wrote in his memoirs, "there were a large number of children, old people aged nearly 100, and pregnant women" among those Gypsies killed.

Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss

All the methods of destruction aimed at the Jews were also applied to the Gypsies. Einsatzgruppen teams killed Gypsies wherever they found them. One UNESCO article titled "Gypsy Victims of the Nazi Terror" gives the following information:

In Poland and in the Soviet Union Gypsies were killed both in death camps and in the open countryside… Wherever the Nazis passed, Gypsies were arrested, deported, or murdered. In Yugoslavia, executions of Jews and Gypsies began in October 1941 in the forests, where peasants still remember the cries of children being driven in trucks to the places of their execution.99

It is difficult to estimate how many Gypsies the Nazis killed, although the statistics give some idea. According to historian Raoul Hilberg, there were 34,000 Gypsies living in Germany before the Holocaust, the vast majority of whom were killed. Reports from the Einsatzgruppen responsible for the massacres in Russia, Ukraine and the Crimea indicate that some 300,000 Gypsies were slaughtered in those countries. According to the Yugoslavian authorities, 28,000 Gypsies were killed within the borders of Serbia alone. No estimate can be made of the number of victims in Poland: The historian Joseph Tenenbaum says that the Nazis murdered a total of at least 500,000.

Despite that terrible tragedy, the genocide of the Gypsies is generally ignored. In books, films and articles about the Holocaust, that genocide is either not referred to at all, or else portrayed as an unimportant matter. Ian Hancock of the Romany Archive and Documentation Center in Texas, says there is "a move to underrate the Gypsy genocide."100

Yet there was no difference between the way the Gypsies and the Jews were treated. Both groups were excluded from German society under the 1936 Nürnberg Laws. Adolf Eichmann, one of the most influential figures in the Holocaust, wrote, "The Jewish and gypsy problems need to be resolved together and at the same time," which effectively meant the destruction of both nations. In the concentration camps and those areas under Nazi occupation, Gypsies were murdered just as ruthlessly as Jews.101

Genocide Aimed at the Poles

Poland was one country where Nazi genocide was most widely perpetrated. The photograph shows a Polish Jew beaten by Nazis. In addition to Jews, three million Catholic Poles were also murdered.

Throughout the course of World War II, the Nazis killed some 6 million Polish citizens. Three million of these were Jews, and the others Catholics. Yet the drama of the Polish Catholics is generally forgotten or ignored.

Hitler's hatred of the Poles stemmed both from his regarding them as untermenschen (inferior people) and from the belief that they had occupied Germanlebensraum (space to live). That is why he aimed his first military attack at Poland. On August 22, 1939, the German armies suddenly invaded Poland, a move which sparked off World War II. A few days before the invasion, Hitler had given his commanders this message: "You must ruthlessly kill all men, women and children of Polish origin, or who speak Polish. That is the only way we can secure the space we need to live."102

Within a few weeks, Nazi armies had occupied all of Poland and, in accordance with Hitler's order, set about a systematic genocide. All landowners' property was taken away, and rationing was introduced. Polish children with features resembling those of the German race were forcibly taken from their families and sent to Germany, to be trained as soldiers. A complete massacre of the Polish intelligentsia was initiated. Hundreds of community leaders, mayors, civil servants, priests, teachers, judges, senators and doctors were executed publicly. Tens of thousands of other educated people were sent to the concentration camps and lost their lives there. Over the course of the war, Poland lost 45 percent of its doctors, 57 percent of its lawyers, 40 percent of its teachers, 30 percent of its technicians and engineers, and a large part of its journalists and men of religion.

Hitler also wanted to destroy Polish culture and everything to do with Poland. All middle schools and colleges were closed. All Polish-language newspapers were closed down. Libraries and bookshops were burned. All written cultural records and works of art were destroyed. Religious institutions were the most important target of all. Churches and other religious places were torn down. The majority of the country's priests were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The names of streets and roads were changed, their old Polish names replaced with new German ones.

The Nazis murdered 6 million Polish citizens. Half of these were Jews, and the other half Polish Catholics. At Auschwitz and the other death camps, the first victims were these Polish Catholics. The historian Richard C. Lukas writes, "So many Poles were sent to the concentration camps that just about every Polish family had someone who had been tortured or killed in the camps."103

As in Poland, many devout Catholics in Germany, and priests in particular, became targets of the Nazis, who hated Christianity and wanted German society to return to the pre-Christian pagan culture. After seizing power, they rounded up a great many Catholic figures and sent them to the concentration camps. In Dachau, a special section was set up for priests, and thousands were sent there. Only a few survived; some were shot, and others died by inches of starvation or disease. In the same way, Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany and territories under German occupation were arrested, sent off to the camps and killed, because they considered taking an oath of loyalty to Nazi Germany to be incompatible with their beliefs.104

All the Other Victims

As we have seen so far, Nazi savagery was aimed at a number of ethnic groups, not just the Jews. At the basis of this lay Hitler's racist theory known as lebensraumpolitik, which means "the room-to-live policy." Hitler suggested that Germany was not large enough for the German population and that the Aryan race was being "constricted." He then claimed that land belonging to eastern countries such as Poland and Ukraine should be taken to give Germans new "room to live." The populations in those areas, mainly Slav, were to be eliminated in order to provide that extra space.

Nazi documents show that within the borders of the Soviet Union alone, the "room to live" contained a population of some 75 million, which the Nazis intended to reduce to some 30 million—to be used as slave labor to meet the needs of Germans who were moving in. The Nazis planned to transport the remaining 45 million still further eastwards, or to kill them by various means.

In occupied countries, the partisans were resistance groups set up to fight the Nazis, who eliminated whole towns and villages on the pretext that they had supported the partisans.

The massacres the Nazis perpetrated against civilian population in their occupied areas show that they put this plan into operation. One justification for these was that the civilian populations had "supported the partisans"—resistance units established to fight the Nazis in occupied countries. The entire population of a village or town would be wiped out for allegedly having helped the partisans. According to the historian H. Kuhnrich's estimate, "5,900,225 people were killed as a result of the anti-partisan war." Of these, 4.5 million were Ukrainians.

Between 1939 and 1945, those non-combatants killed in Poland number more than 6 million. This represents 3 million Jews, 200,000 gypsies and the remainder Christian Polish Slavs. Almost all Polish intellectuals were murdered. In Yugoslavia, some 1.2 million civilians were killed: 9 percent of the total population. This figure excludes some 300,000 Yugoslavian troops or fighters who died during the war.

The worst losses were suffered by the Soviet Union. By May 10, 1943, the Nazis had captured some 5.4 million Soviet troops, of whom 3.5 million starved, froze to death, or were hanged, shot, or exterminated in the concentration camps. In 1944, when the Germans withdrew completely from Soviet territory the population of Ukraine had reduced from 42 to 27.4 million, a difference of 14.6 million. If we subtract those who migrated and survived captivity during the war, some 7 million people still lost their lives. Within the borders of the Soviet Union, 11 million fell victim to the Nazis' policy of mass destruction and genocide.105

All told, it appears that a total of 26 million people lost their lives as a result of the Nazi massacres of civilians. Of these, 6 million were Jews, up to 750,000 gypsies, and the rest Slavs living in such countries as Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Yugoslavia.

The total of all those who died in World War II, including all military and civilian casualties, is a staggering 55 million.

For this reason, the attitude that some researchers refer to as "Jewish exclusivity"—portraying Nazi barbarity as aimed solely at the Jews and ignoring all the other victims—is very wrong. As described earlier, that interpretation is advanced by the radical Zionist movement, which seeks to use the tragedy of the Holocaust for political ends. (The collaboration between these radical Zionists and the Nazis must not be forgotten).

Historical sources show that the Nazis slaughtered millions of people, not just Jews. Some 26 million people lost their lives because of Nazi savagery; 6 million of them Jews, the rest being Gypsies and Slavs from such countries as Poland, Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Russia.

In our view, the correct attitude towards the Holocaust must be based on these essential facts:

1. Nazi Germany was one of the cruelest regimes in history. Wide cooperation must ensure that the racist and fascist ideology that gave rise to that regime will never rise again to inflict any more disasters on mankind.
2. The Jews suffered more from Nazi brutality than any other group. The Nazis viciously murdered 5.7 million Jews, making no allowance for innocent women and children. For such a tragedy never to be repeated, there must be a worldwide cultural campaign against those groups hostile to the Jews, and their malignant ideology must be done away with forever.
3. The Nazis' other victims of savagery must never be forgotten. No credit must be given to the concept of "Jewish exclusivity." The Nazis tried to exterminate the mentally and physically handicapped, the gypsies, devout Catholics, the Poles and Slaves, and members of many other faiths and nations. All must be remembered in the same way. No one group's pain is any less or any less important than any other's.
4. No one must attempt to use the Holocaust for political ends. Particularly not some Zionists and certain radical groups in the state of Israel. The fact that the Nazis murdered 5.7 million Jews does not give them the right to murder other people (Palestinians, for instance). The tragedy of the Holocaust cannot be used to justify the outrages inflicted by Israel on the Middle East. Such behavior is the worst possible lack of respect for the Holocaust's victims.
5. Those Jews in Israel and other countries who support radical Zionist ideology must come to terms with the "behind the scenes" aspect of the Holocaust: Radical Zionists of the time collaborated with the Nazis, secretly supporting the Nazis when it was in their own interests to do so, and prevented their fellow Jews being saved by saying that Jewish blood needed to be spilt for the sake of their post-war aims. This truth, openly expressed by some devout Jews and Jewish intellectuals who call to account those responsible, must be explained and debated in a more open manner.

That being the case, certain circles in the Israeli administration should question their worldview and replace the racist Zionist mentality, which denies the Palestinians the right to live, with a peaceful, humane version of Zionism that wishes to live in peace with the Palestinians. That is the way to end conflicts in the Middle East.

Before moving on to examine certain policies adopted by the state of Israel, we need to remember that it isn't a proper approach to criticize its policies as a whole. As is true of a great many other nations, various different elements shape the state of Israel's policies. Those policies and practices illuminated here are the perverted activities of radical circles within Israel's inner establishment, under the influence of radical Zionist ideology, and based on misinterpretation of the Old Testament. These circles represent the main obstacle to peace, regarding all non-Jews as inferior, considering their mistreatment as legitimate, and aiming at world domination. The information in this chapter should be considered in that light.

Chapter Four
Israel's Anti-Semitism Policy

Chapter One examined the efforts of certain Zionist leaders to establish the state of Israel, and in particular how radical Zionists worked hand-in-hand with anti-Semites from the beginning of the 20th century to accomplish their goal. Certainly the most striking examples of this collaboration were the arrangements between Nazi Germany and some Zionists, whose aspiration was to exile European Jews to Palestine and to establish a Jewish state there, no matter what.

This policy proved successful in two ways. First, thanks to the Nazis' anti-Semitic policy, large numbers of Jews did emigrate to Palestine. The second aspect of their success was psychological: Now the world could assent to Jews, who had suffered most terribly during World War II, establishing their own nation.

Bombing of the Golan Heights during the 1967 War

At last in 1948, the state of Israel was established. It wasn't exactly what some Zionist leaders had dreamed of, since the United Nations had partitioned Palestine into two separate states—one Jewish, one Arab—giving to each roughly half the original territory. As soon as Israel was proclaimed in 1948, however, the Arab-Israeli war broke out. Following that, the Jewish state annexed the rest of Palestine, except for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. During 1967's Six-Day War, Israeli occupied all of Palestine, including the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem; and also the Golan Heights (a part of Syria) and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. In 1982, it was Lebanon's turn to be invaded by Israel. Following that campaign, Israel unilaterally declared a border area in south Lebanon a "security zone" and continued its invasions.

East Jerusalem occupied by Israeli tanks

This policy of invasions reflected some Israeli leaders' dreams for a "Greater Israel." This objective stemmed from a misinterpretation of certain statements in the Old Testament. According to that erroneous view, the Children of Israel had been promised the greater part of the lands of the Middle East. Thus, radical circles envisaged the Judaization of these lands by their being seized and cleansed of their Arab population. Because of such influential radical views in its administration, Israel did everything possible to avoid relinquishing its occupied territories, above all the core of the "Promised Land" on the West Bank. In order to realize Judaization, Jewish immigrants have been settled in these occupied territories. Some of these settlers were radical Jews, considering it a religious mission. But the real settlers were to be immigrants from the Diaspora.

The Israeli capture of the Sinai Peninsula

In short, the founding of Israel did not put an end to its need for Jewish immigrants. Those Jews who have emigrated to Palestine since 1948 represented only a small portion of the world's Jews, most of whom continued to prefer to live in the Diaspora. The dream of a Greater Israel continued to be the motive that made some Israeli leaders seek the emigration of world Jewry to Israel. As the decades passed, however, they have been disappointed. Each year, they set a target for the number of Jews they hope will immigrate, but those goals have seemed more and more utopian. Ben Gurion's attempt to persuade four million Jews to immigrate to Israel between 1951 and 1961 failed badly; only 800,000 responded to his summons. By the end of that ten-year period, the annual number of immigrants had fallen below thirty thousand. In 1975 and 1976, the number of Jews emigrating from Israel actually exceeded those immigrating there.

In an article titled "The General with a Phantom Army," which appeared in the Jerusalem Post (October 7, 1978), Meir Merhav described how unwilling Jews were to immigrate to Israel:

In the history of Zionism and the State of Israel, there has never been a mass emigration. The radical or Zionist Jews always arrived at the country in small groups and in small numbers. When these idealists realized that the facts were not as they dreamt, they left Israel. All Jewish communities preferred to immigrate to other places rather than Israel, even in their most troubled times. Only 60 thousand of the 300 thousand Jews of Germany emigrated during the period 1933-39. Most of them did not even think of immigrating to Israel. This applies to other Jewish communities as well. The 50-60 percent of the Russian Jews who are the most downtrodden desire to go elsewhere than Israel. We do not like these facts, but there is no way to deny them. We should understand one thing; no mass immigration to Israel will ever take place.

Thus Diaspora Jews have continued to resist immigrating to Israel after its establishment, no less than they did in the 1920s and '30s. What, then, should have been done to bring them to Israel? Simply put, the answer was to repeat the earlier policy: to instigate the threat of anti-Semitism once more as a goad to drive the Jews out of the Diaspora to Israel. Some Zionists have shown little reluctance in saying exactly that. As the American rabbi Leo Pfeffer, an official of the American Jewish Congress, stated, "It is possible that some anti-Semitism is necessary to insure Jewish survival."106

Nahum Goldman: "a current decline in anti-Semitism might constitute a new danger to Jewish survival." (left)
Goldman, at the World Jewish Congress in 1966 (right)

In 1958, Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Zionist Organization, emphasized Zionism's inevitable need for anti-Semitism and warned that a current decline of anti-Semitism "might constitute a new danger to Jewish survival."107

Earlier, the Nazis had been enlisted to aid "Jewish survival." This time, new links could be forged with a variety of local anti-Semites, or, failing such links, Israel itself could direct operations to create an artificial anti-Semitism. This is what actually happened! The following pages relate in some detail the Jewish state's war, on several fronts, against Diaspora Jewry.

Threats to Diaspora Jews from Israeli Leaders

David Ben Gurion, from the day he was appointed Israel's first prime minister, experimented with various methods of increasing immigration to Israel. On August 31, 1949, he told a group of Americans visiting Israel:

Although we realized our dream of establishing a Jewish state, we are still at the beginning. Today there are only 900,000 Jews in Israel, while the greater part of the Jews are still abroad. The future consists of bringing all Jews to Israel. We appeal to the parents to help us bring their children here. Even if they decline to help, we will bring the youth to Israel; but I hope that this will not be necessary.108

(Left) Ben Gurion: "We must save the remnants of Israel in the Diaspora. We must also save their possessions. Without these two things, we shall not build this country."
(Right) Israel Goldstein: "What are American Jews waiting for? Are they waiting for a Hitler to force them out? Do they imagine that they will be spared the tragedies which have forced Jews of other lands to emigrate?"

In December 1960, at the Twenty-fifth World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Ben Gurion again castigated Jews who resisted immigrating to Israel. He derided Jews who lived outside Israel as "Jews without a God," adding that "Jews in America do not even know what being a real Jew means."

In the years that followed, another famous figure, Moshe Dayan, also adopted the view that one way or another, the Jewish people had to be forced to emigrate to Israel. In July 1968, he spoke out strongly against those who thought enough Jews were moving to Israel: "During the last hundred years, our people have been in a process of building up our country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road."109

In May 1948, in a report submitted to the American Jewish Congress, held by the efforts of Simon Rifkind and Louis Levinthal, advisers on Jewish affairs, and Zionist leader Rabbi Philip Bernstein, radical Zionist Rabbi Klausner openly threatened the Jewish nation. He admitted that in the past, radical Zionist leaders had fostered a persecution complex to pressure Jews to immigrate to Israel, and he frankly advocated that the policy should continue:

... I am convinced that the people must be forced to go to Palestine... By “force” I suggest a program. It is not a new program. It was used before, and most recently… The first step in such a program is the adoption of the principle that it is the conviction of the world Jewish community that these people must go to Palestine … To effect this program, it becomes necessary for the Jewish community at large to reverse its policy and instead of creating comforts for the Displaced Persons to make them as uncomfortable as possible. The American Joint Distribution Committee supplies should be withdrawn … A further procedure would call for an organization such as the Haganah to harass the Jew … It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with a sick people. They are not to be asked, but to be told, what to do … If this program is not accepted, let me assure this Conference that an incident will occur which will compel the American Jewish community to reconsider its policy and make the changes herein suggested. At that time, there will have been much more suffering, a greater wave of anti-Semitism and a tougher struggle to accomplish what might perhaps be accomplished today. 110

The radical Zionist rabbi Joseph Klausner: “The first step in such a program is the adoption of the principle that it is the conviction of the world Jewish community that these people must go to Palestine. To effect this program, it becomes necessary for the Jewish community... to make them [displaced persons] as uncomfortable as possible… A further procedure would call for an organization such as the Haganah to harass the Jew ... It must be borne in mind that we are dealing with a sick people. They are not to be asked, but to be told, what to do.”

 

As Klausner admitted, the policy of Israel's inner establishment has been to promote Jewish immigration through using force. He made no bones about how this should be implemented in practice: "to make them as uncomfortable as possible." If, despite these pressures, immigration to Israel remained beneath expectations, Klausner's final expedient was to warn of what might eventually befall Diaspora Jews: They could face "an accident" which would "bring many pains with it." Such an "accident" might well resemble that created as a result of the radical Zionists' World War II collaboration with the Nazis against European Jews who resisted immigrating to Palestine. Zionist leader Dr. Israel Goldstein complained of Jewish apathy regarding immigrating to Israel, and delivered implicit and threatening messages:

What are American Jews waiting for? Are they waiting for a Hitler to force them out? Do they imagine that they will be spared the tragedies which have forced Jews of other lands to emigrate?111

Ben Gurion stated that for Israel, "saving Jews from bondage was a holy duty." After the 1949 Israeli election, he referred to Jews living outside Israel as "remnants":

We must save the remnants of Israel in the Diaspora. We must also save their possessions. Without these two things, we shall not build this country.112

Ben Gurion had put into words Israel's future policy. The first "remnants in the Diaspora" to be forced to immigrate to Israel were in fact Jews who had survived the Nazi concentration camps.

Terror by Radical Zionists against Jews in the Postwar DP Camps

After the war, some Jews freed from the Nazi camps had to live in Displaced Persons Camps, because they had now here else to go.

At the end of World War II, Jews from Nazi concentration camps with nowhere to go were settled in "displaced persons" camps, where a number of Zionist leaders exercised great authority. The tragedy of the European Jews, brought about in good measure by some Zionist leaders, continued after the war for many Jews unwilling to immigrate to Israel. For these displaced Jews, there were few changes in living conditions. Instead, they were now dominated by radical Zionist leaders, almost as merciless as the Nazis.

The report, in which Rabbi Klausner had argued for forcing Jews to immigrate to Palestine, was the basis for the various terror tactics that the radical Zionist organization Irgun applied in the displaced persons camps. This policy of oppression implemented against their fellow Jews would come to light only years later. More than once, intelligence reports of OMGUS (the Office of Military Government for Germany—U.S.) reported the brutal measures undertaken by the Irgun among Jews to raise funds and to recruit soldiers, by force, for fighting the Arabs in Palestine. Here are some examples taken from an OMGUS report:

Irgun kept the running of these camps under its control. The organization also influenced the police force in these camps. Irgun and the camp police employed violent methods, intimidating, threatening and shedding blood if necessary… In July 1948, DPs [displaced persons] in Berlin who claimed to have just arrived from Poland were found instead to have fled the American zone to avoid the Irgun "recruitment" drives. In Duppel Center DP Camp, Irgun recruiters beat some of those who refused to "volunteer" to fight the Arabs in Palestine, and others were threatened with death if they ever refused to go. While prospective recruits were being persuaded, the main gates to the camp were closed to prevent escape.113

The militants of the Haganah also used force against their fellow Jews. Stephen Green writes:

Some of the camps began to report around this time that the Haganah was adopting violent tactics similar to those of the Irgun. An elite, paramilitary group within the Haganah called Sochnut began to appear in report after report of threats, beatings, and intimidation... Although the OMGUS authorities only began to notice this selection process in mid-1948, it had in fact been practiced for many months, especially by the Irgun... Jewish victims of the Nazi terror again were forced to flee friends and family, to escape Zionist terror.114

Peter Rodes, Director of Intelligence for OMGUS, was puzzled and frustrated by the activities of radical Zionists in the Jewish camps, and commented about the terror of these radicals: "It is reported that 300 persons left Tikwah for Israel. Of this number, about 65 percent have been forced to go through the application of various degrees of pressure."115

The weekly intelligent report prepared by OMGUS, the Office of Military Government for Germany/U.S., dated July 10, 1948 numbered 113. Referring to the report dated July 3, 1948 numbered 112, the document explains under the topic of "Terrorist Tactics" in detail that the terror organization Irgun pressured the Jewish people to immigrate to the Promised Land.

By mid-1948, intelligence reports of OMGUS were calling "terror tactics" what had become standard operating procedure in the DP camps for recruiters from both the Haganah and the Irgun.

A propagandist poster of Israel to make Jews emigrate to the Promised Land in 1950s: "Direction: Hebrew land." On one side is a sunny and bright Israel, on the other concentration camps, darkness and dangerous Diaspora countries.

A typical incident occurred at the Kriegslazarett Camp in Traunstein, Bavaria. The camp police cordoned off the building to prevent anyone entering or leaving. On 14 June, a Jewish holiday, those Jews who refused to go to Israel were warned not to go to the synagogue; otherwise they would be expelled from the synagogue. When Israel was founded, those Jews living in Palestine organized terror in the camps to convince them to migrate to Israel. Since Israel's foundation, around a dozen people had left the Kriegslazarett camp. These volunteers were known as the "Ghuis." Six or seven of these men returned a couple of days later. During the time they remained in the camps, they terrorized the other young people who were unwilling to go to Israel.116

Such Jews, subjected to every kind of pressure in the DP camps, were guilty only of rejecting radical Zionism. To get them to immigrate to the Promised Land, the radical Zionist leaders compelled them to become radical Zionists by committing acts of terror and discrimination against non-radical Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews.117

Their policy of intimidation implemented against Jews living in the DP camps gradually became known, and was supplemented by a feverish propaganda campaign. On August 21, 1948, the American magazine The New Leader printed a letter from Louis Nelson, then manager of the Knit Goods Workers Union, later vice president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. Nelson reported that the campaign sought to force displaced persons to accept Zionism, and to join the Palestinian Jewish army. Alfred Lilienthal described the Zionist pressure in the DP camps:

This means confiscation of food rations, dismissal from work, smashing of machines sent by Americans to train DPs in useful skills, taking away legal protection and visa rights from dissenters, even to the point of expelling them from the camps, and in one instance, the public flogging of a recalcitrant recruit for the Israeli Army. In addition, widespread stories of pogroms even in the USA were told to the ignorant and harassed DPs…118

This policy of certain Zionist leaders, in its various ramifications, eventually paid off. The Jewish community, drained by the war years, found resistance difficult. Jews released from the camps with these Zionists' help followed their orders and left for Israel, although, as Lilienthal writes, "The majority specified a preference of going anywhere but Palestine, despite the intense propaganda work of the Jewish Agency among the inmates of the... camps."119

In the years immediately following World War II, the radical Zionist leaders' policy was, on the one hand, to pressure Jews in these camps to migrate, and, on the other, to use these same Jews' sufferings in the international political arena.

As Israeli writer Amos Perlmutter observes:

Ben Gurion and the Zionists then decided to combine the Holocaust and independence, the plight of Jewish displaced persons and survivors of the camps with the concept of partition… The pursuit of a displaced persons policy had not been one of the Zionists' major goals (no matter how much some historians like to insist that it was). Now, in 1946, the plight of the displaced persons in British camps coincided with pragmatic politics on several levels. On the most immediate front, immigration to Eretz Israel was always a major Zionist concern…120

Israeli leader Shimon Peres

Thanks to their victory in the 1948 war, the Israelis were able to enlarge the territory the United Nations had granted them in the 1947 partition of Palestine. This expansion emboldened a section of Israel's leadership and led to plans for bringing in more Jews to settle the Promised Land. In 1949, Jews around the world were bluntly summoned to immigrate to Israel. The following year, this call was even supported by the Law of Return, which stated that a Jew (defined as one born of a Jewish mother) from anywhere in the world had the right to settle in Israel.

This law has been debated in Israel for many years. Some intellectuals believe that it is clearly racist. Yet the official policy it expresses has never changed. Shimon Peres stated the Israeli point of view in the newspaper Davar on January 25, 1972, saying that the implementation of Law 125 (the Law of Return) was a continuation of the war to get Jews to come to Israel and settle there.

Peres's statement that making Jews settle in Israel was a "war" is true, insofar as some influential circles in Israeli administration use compulsion on Diaspora Jewry, due to its unwillingness to "make aliyah," or immigrate to Israel. Thus these circles make war not only on hostile nations or groups, but also on that portion of world Jewry that has allegedly lost the awareness of race and turned their backs on radical Zionism.

Organizer of Emigration: Mossad le-Aliyah Bet

On May 2, 1948, as noted above, Rabbi Klausner told the American Jewish Congress that the Jews needed to be forced to immigrate to Palestine and spoke of making these Jews as uneasy as possible. Klausner was an important figure in the radical Zionist movement, and a candidate in Israel's first election for president. His thoughts on "pressuring Jews" reflected not only his personal views, but represented the radical Zionist movement's general policy. Speeches by some leaders such as Ben Gurion and Israel Goldstein expressed the same ideas.

With Mossad forcing the Diaspora Jews to immigrate to Israel, many Jews immigrated to Israel from all around the world. The map shows the Jewish migration from various countries to Israel.

Certain people in the Israeli administration planned and carried out a sophisticated program to press Diaspora Jews to immigrate. The "disturbing" methods employed in the operation were instances of artificially induced anti-Semitism. These circles not only encouraged anti-Semitism, as described earlier, but even manufactured it.The Mossad and Aliyah Bet, its special branch for underground secret services, carried out the most effective operations, such as attacks on synagogues and other locations where Jews gathered. In this way, Jews were led to believe they were in danger where they lived, and—hopefully—seek "salvation through emigration."

In its efforts to convince unwilling Jews to immigrate to the Promised Land, Aliyah Bet had no use for humane persuasion. Turkkaya Ataov, professor emeritus of international relations, in the book Siyonizm ve Irkcilik (Zionism and Racism), writes:

More than 80 percent of the emigrants to Israel came from Eastern Europe, the Arabian Middle East, and North Africa. Although most of these Jews had no intention to emigrate, a clever policy of oppression and propaganda compelled them to do so. Egyptian Jews unwilling to join felt themselves in danger, while 700 thousand people from Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco were forced to emigrate with threats and feverish calls.121

Aliyah Bet devised numerous dirty tricks to convince thousands of Jews living outside Israel to immigrate to the Promised Land. Its dark operations against the Jewish community outside Israel included:

• "Operation Magic Carpet" (1949-1950), in which fifty thousand Yemenite Jews were lured to Israel by the claim that on the foundation of Israel, "the Messiah had appeared there;"
• "Operation Ali Baba" (1950-1959), in which 120,000 Iraqi Jews were induced to immigrate to Israel by outrages that included the bombings of synagogues in Baghdad, carried out by Aliyah Bet;
• "Operation Moses" (1984), a covert operation in which Aliyah Bet carried off seven thousand Ethiopian Jews from eastern Sudan to Israel; and
• "Operation Solomon" (1991), in which fifteen thousand more Ethiopian Jews were purchased like slaves from the leaders of the Ethiopian regime, and transported to Israel.

Aliyah Bet created the atmosphere necessary for large numbers of Jews to perceive "aliyah" ("return") as "salvation." Of Aliyah Bet, the Israeli journalists Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman write:

Members of the intelligence community firmly denied using any terrorist tactics, but they were proud to say that they consistently came up with new and original methods to transport Jews to Israel. They were, after all, for the survival of their new nation... Thanks to the secret agents of Aliyah Bet, the population of Israel nearly doubled, to over one million Jews, in the first four years after independence.122

Its agents succeeded in doubling the population of Israel in its first four years. But this success rested on tactics just as vile as those used in radical Zionism's earlier operations to pressure Jews to immigrate to Palestine.

Mossad Bombs Iraqi Jews: Operation Ali Baba

 All the systematic pressure some Zionist leaders exerted on the Western Jews did not result in the expected flood of immigrants to Israel. This led these Zionist leaders to adopt even more radical measures against Jewish communities. As Prof. Turkkaya Ataov points out in his book Siyonizm ve Irkcilik: "When the expected rush of western Jews did not materialize, it became the calculated policy of the radical Zionists to stir up trouble for the Jews of the Diaspora so as to persuade, or even to force them to emigrate and to occupy the lands vacated by the Palestinian Arabs."123

As the first to "suffer from harsh conditions," a number of Israeli leaders chose Iraqi Jews who, as descendants of the Biblical Hebrews exiled to Babylon, had a 2,500-year history in Mesopotamia. Their population now numbering 150,000, they had built sixty synagogues and until the arrival of Mossad's agents, had lived in peace with their Muslim neighbors.

Despite the enactment of the Law of Return in 1950, the Iraqi Jews were unwilling to "return" to Israel. Mossad agents, aware of this reluctance, did not hesitate to inform Iraqi Jews of the danger that supposedly menaced them. A bomb placed in Baghdad's Masouda Shemtov Synagogue killed three Iraqi Jews and injured ten. In the following days, it turned out that the bombers were Mossad agents. The book Siyonizm ve Irkcilik says, "Israeli [Mossad] agents were exposed and tried as responsible for the bombing of the Masauda Shemtou Synagogue in Baghdad."124 The incident is also treated in detail in Every Spy a Prince, a history of the Mossad by the Israeli journalists Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman.

David Reuben, an Iraqi Jew, witnessed the dangers to which his countrymen were exposed. Relating his view of Operation Ali Baba, Reuben stressed that the Zionists waged psychological warfare against Iraqi Jewry. Its primary aim was to create hostility between Muslims and Jews in order to force the Jews to flee to their "homeland." In addition to the psychological war, synagogues were bombed as well, resulting in injuries to Jews. Muslims were accused of these deeds, until eventually the Jews came to believe that they weren't safe in their own homes. According to Reuben, radical Zionists were responsible for all the incidents.125

Iraqi Jews whose synagogues were bombed by Mossad found their "escape" through immigration to Israel. The above photograph was taken in the plane during the transportation of a group of Iraqi Jews to Israel.

This murky operation was planned and ordered by radical Zionists within the Israeli inner establishment. This eventually came to light when the bloody emigration operation, one of Israeli history's dirtiest secrets, was exposed in the Israeli press. The Israeli weekly Ha'olam Haze (April 20, June 1, 1966) and the daily Yedioth Aharonot (November 8, 1977) both declared that the Mossad had committed the bombings, as did the Israeli writer Ilan Halevi in his 1981 book La Question Juive (The Jewish Question). The Ali Baba Operation was also exposed in August 1972 by Kokhavi Shemesh, in an Israeli newspaper calledBlack Panthers. In addition, on November 7, 1977, journalist Baruch Nadel submitted some questions through the Tel-Aviv Superior Court to Mordechai Ben-Porat, one of the spies that Israel sent to Iraq and who would later become a Knesset member. His answers corroborated the above revelations.

Iraqi Jews frightened by the Mossad's bombs found their "escape" through immigration to Israel. By the end of Operation Ali Baba, conceived and carried out by radical Zionist leaders, 120,000 Iraqi Jews had been transferred to Israel.

Another factor influential in attracting Iraqi Jews was the covert diplomatic relations between those of power and influence in Israel and some in the Iraqi government. Agents of Aliyah Bet were able to bribe the then Iraqi Prime Minister in order to "purchase" Jews:

Shlomo Hillel [a senior Aliyah B operative] was posing as "British businessman Richard Armstrong," representing Near East Air Transport Corporation of the United States in talks with the Iraqi government. The obscure American airline covered its tracks carefully so as to disguise its close ties with the Israel government. No one knew that during 1948-1949 the company had flown all fifty thousand Jews of Yemen Aden to Israel... After two years of active anti-Semitic oppression, the Iraqi parliament passed a law in March 1950 that permitted every Jew who wished to do so to leave the country. They would simply have to give up their Iraqi citizenship. This seemed surprisingly lenient from a regime that had declared war on Israel and arrested hundreds of Jews for Zionist activities. The explanation lay in incentives offered to the prime minister who opened the emigration gates, Toufik al-Sawidi. He was also the chairman of Iraq Tours, which—by no coincidence—was appointed agent for Near East Air Transport Corporation. In other words by a roundabout method, the head of Iraq's government received bribes and kickbacks from Israeli intelligence.126

The Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) were numbered on their foreheads, and brought to Israel in special operations set up by Mossad. There, they were treated as second-class citizens by some in the Israeli administration.

Naeim Giladi is now writing books on Israel's cruel policy toward the Jews of Iraq. The New American View reports that Giladi was born in Iraq in 1930. In his youth, while still a committed and active radical Zionist, Giladi witnessed murderous attacks inflicted on the Iraqi Jewish community. As a living witness to what happened behind the scenes in those days, the details he provides are valuable admissions.

He joined the underground Zionist movement in the wake of the Jewish massacre in Baghdad organized by the British in 1941. After World War II, he worked on Operation Ali Baba to transfer Iraqi Jews to Israel. In 1992 Giladi published a book titled Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah of the Mossad Eliminated Jews, in which he described his experiences in the underground Zionist organization in Iraq. He also provided information about the underground Zionist agent Ben Porat, who enabled Iraqi Jews to migrate from Baghdad to Israel. According to Giladi, Ben Porat terrified and terrorized the Jews to leave Iraq, where they had lived in peace and wealth for 2,500 years. Giladi maintained that Mossad terrorists bombed cafes and synagogues frequented by Jews in order to force them to migrate to Israel, and that Zionists such as Ben Porat accused Iraqi Muslims for carrying out such attacks. The plan worked, and the Jews fled to Israel. Yet the Iraqi Jewish people found themselves in the position of second-class citizens, oppressed by the European Jews running Israel.127

Thus radical Zionists with underground organizations forced Iraq's Jews to leave what had been their homeland for thousands of years, and to become second-class citizens. In today's Israel, the tragedy of the Iraqi Jews continues:

The Iraqis in Israel were already disgruntled, blaming the European-born leadership of the Jewish state for thrusting them into primitive tents and huts with little hope of decent housing or employment. The new Sephardic—"Oriental"—immigrants felt humiliated to be sprayed with insecticide and given no freedom of choice.128

Removing the Ethiopian Jews from Their Homeland, or Moses and Solomon Operations

The Falashas, black Jews who had dwelt in Ethiopia for centuries, were a target of some Israelis' efforts to return Jewish "exiles" back to their homeland. The emigration of the Falashas was accomplished in two major operations of the Aliyah Bet, Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991.

To enable the 1984 operation, the Israelis paid sizable bribes to Ethiopia's leaders and—since the Ethiopian Jews had to be transferred by way of Sudan—they also bought off the overthrown President of Sudan and his close associates. Sudanese President Gaafar Muhammad al-Nimeiry, Vice President Omar el-Tayeb, and their "special consultant" Baha Ydris (nicknamed "Mr. 10 Percent" for his well-known involvement in taking bribes and in all sorts of other illegal activities) accepted $56 million for allowing the Falashas to be transferred via Sudan. In short, radical Zionist leaders purchased the Falashas just like chattel, after driving a bargain with Ethiopia's and Sudan's leaders. The negotiating parties had no need to ask where the Ethiopian Jews would like to live. The Falashas' price was paid to the Ethiopian leaders, and the Ethiopian Jews were later flown to Israel. Nokta magazine paints a dramatic picture of their arrival:

When the Falashas, numbered stickers on their foreheads, got off the plane, they left a pale and tired, young yet frail, impression on people. Almost fourteen thousand Falashas arrived in Zion with numbers on their foreheads, and they resembled the Jewish prisoners consigned to Nazi concentration camps years ago with tattoos on their wrists.129

Israel abandoned black Jews to their death. Ethiopia forces its Jewish inhabitants to emigrate.

This is not a Nazi concentration camp

The Turkish daily Günaydın, dated September 21, 1984, explained the treatment that the Falashas received in Israel:

"This is not a Nazi concentration camp...

Despite the fact that the situation is no different than that of the Nazi camps, that the victims are black make other Jews turn a blind eye on the situation... They watch the destruction of their black friends almost with pleasure."

The treatment they underwent came quickly to the notice of international organizations. A human rights group called the French Solidarity Association criticized the Israeli government, declaring that there were no humanitarian reasons to transfer Ethiopian Jews to the Promised Land:

The French Solidarity Association suggested that the Israeli government had not transferred the Ethiopian Jews to Israel out of humane considerations and declared that the real reason for the rescue operation was to establish new settlements in the occupied territories so that Israel could continue its expansionist policy. In the meantime, opposition to the secret transfer of thousands of Falashas to Israel continues. Because of the uproar this event created, the Israeli government had to end the emigration.130

In 1991's Operation Solomon, another group of Ethiopian Jews was transported to Israel. The brains behind this operation were the Iranian Jew David Alliance and the Iraqi Jew Sami Shamoon, led by Uri Lubrani. Once again, bribery figured in: A financial deal between Uri Lubrani and Ethiopia's President Mengistu Haile Mariam clinched the operation. The transfer of fifteen thousand Jews to Israel began with Lubrani's meeting with Mengistu to gain his permission. Mengistu's opening offer was $100 million. Lubrani countered with $25 million, but Mengistu said he couldn't accept less than $57.5 million. Finally, they agreed on a payment of $30 million. After the deal was completed, Operation Solomon transferred more than fourteen thousand Ethiopian Jews by air to Israel in May 1991.

For the Falashas, the real tragedy began in Israel. After the glittering promises with which they had lured the Ethiopian Jews, certain Zionist leaders gave them housing barely fit for human habitation.

The ghetto-like settlements in Ambover, which some Israeli leaders regarded as fitting for the Falashas who were forced to abandon their homes in Ethiopia and brought to Israel

On October 10, 1992, a Turkish daily Gundem ran a highly informative article titled "Ghetto Nightmare of the Ethiopian Jews in the Promised Land," reporting that:

Life in the Promised Land is a tragedy... the lives of thousands of Ethiopian Jews have turned into a nightmare in which they are settled in trailers close to the desert with no opportunity of schooling or jobs. Worn-out huts, difficult to call houses, now resemble black ghettoes.

Last year, fourteen thousand black Jews were suddenly transferred to Israel in an air operation that lasted for twenty-two hours, but no permanent housing was provided for these people. A thousand of them are living in hostels and the remaining thirteen thousand are leading their lives in trailers. These trailers are completely isolated from the rest of Israeli society... The leaders of these black Jews describe their conditions as a social tragedy and are awaiting reforms soon. The Ethiopian Jewish leader Rahamim Elazar says, "Trailers are just like ghettos," and adds, "Israel will be condemned around the world as a racist country for isolating these black Jews from the community."

Elazar compares the Falashas' trailer camps in Israel to the black shanty towns in South Africa, adding that "The trailers are so dirty and lacking in drainage that I cannot even call them modern Soweto." He expresses hopelessness for the future. Maaritesh Kandia, with five children, says, "In the summer it is terribly hot, and in winter it is terribly cold. I wish we had a normal place to stay in."

Thirteen thousand of the Ethiopians who were brought to Israel in Operation Solomon currently live in four hundred trailers lined up side by side at the edge of the desert. Maaritesh Kandia and her fellow Falashas complain about their isolation: for instance, they are forced to send their children to school in Jerusalem, two hours away.131

After the Falashas' arrival in Israel, their misery was so evident that even the Israeli authorities acknowledged it, confirming it in official reports:

According to an investigation by the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, a third of the Ethiopian Jews who were transferred to Israel five years ago in Operation Moses do not have permanent places of residence. The same ministry confirmed reports stating that immigrants settled in Kiryat Arba were living in poor conditions.132

Although it has now been ten years since they were brought to Israel, the Ethiopian Jews feel closer to the Arabs than to the Jews of Israel. The Arab-language magazine El-Mecelle examined the plight of the Falashas in an article that noted the ill-treatment and discrimination the Falashas have undergone in Israel, as well as their complaints:

They live in concentration camps
The daily Günayd›n dated September 21, 1984, covered the plight of the Falashas in Israel in an article titled "They Live in Concentration Camps." Above: A photograph from one of these "concentration camps"

From the day the Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel, they have objected to being called Falashas, since in the Ethiopian language Amharic, falasha means "others, different ones." They also complain that the miserable conditions and ill treatment they suffer started only in Israel, not in their former homeland, where they had led peaceful settled lives... Yusuf Minkasha, a technician in the Israeli army, says "One day I will surely leave Israel and go back to Ethiopia"... A pregnant Ethiopian woman comments: "The Israelis have shown that they see us as different from themselves in every regard. I feel closer to the Arabs and prefer to be treated by an Arab doctor, because he will certainly respect me and treat me accordingly."133

The Ethiopian Jews, who left their homes involuntarily, have suffered much psychological trauma. An article in Shalom titled "Will the Ethiopian Jews Celebrate the Fifth Anniversary of Operation Moses?" reports:

The most important problem of the community is their yearning for the families they left in Ethiopia. Unhappiness arising from this separation of families has resulted in suicide attempts by many Ethiopians. Up to now, a total of twenty-five Ethiopians has committed suicide. With Operation Moses they have experienced a social crisis, and the transfer from one very different culture to another has caused depression.134

On June 16, 1991, the total number of suicides was reported by Nokta magazine to have reached fifty. Afterwards, suicides still continued.

Some Zionist leaders took no interest in the Ethiopian Jews' wretched conditions. Bereft of sympathy and support in Israel, the Falashas decided to approach American Jews for help. They sent to American Jews a letter reproaching certain Israeli leaders. On November 16, 1988, Shalom reported on it in an article titled, "Open Letter to the American Jews—Narrating the Pain of Ethiopian Jews—Silence Is Murder." Here are some lines from the letter:

Every day we hear the cries of their sorrow. All their letters speak of death and famine. They report only of children dying from hunger, women, and dying villages. But for more than four years, our families have been kept in silence, and condemned to poverty and hunger. The people who experience these are Ethiopian Jews. We tried to approach American Jewry in order to help us unite our families. Our purpose is to appeal to a larger community which will be interested in our families.

… The reason for this silence is that they do not wish to repeat the mistakes that put an end to the Operation Moses. That would mean that the Israeli leaders are committed to continuing their ill-treatment of the Ethiopian Jews. Their anachronistic attitude condemns the Ethiopian Jews to a living death. Is this the sort of behavior worthy of leaders? The debate was over whether the plea to unite the separated families should be endorsed or not. The petition pointed out the following:

"We have signed below as persons representing different sectors of the Ethiopian community. We inform that it causes us astonishment and regret that the Ethiopian Government does not allow the Ethiopian Jews to unite with their children, mothers, fathers, and relatives." The most basic human rights are denied the Ethiopian Jews. Our families are separated. To increase sensitivity we have signed this letter, but it too is denied. Have these Jewish leaders no conscience? The behavior of the Diaspora Jewish leaders is sending our families to death and separation—Shlome Mula (President, Ethiopian Jewish Students Union); Rahamim Elazar (President, Union of Ethiopian Jews in Israel); Uri Tekele (Leader, Beta Israel Association); Yisrael Yitzhak (President, Ethiopian Immigrants Association).

The radical Israelis not only mistreated the Ethiopian Jews in Israel, but concealed the hardships of the Falashas in Ethiopia. In 1987, for example, the Ethiopian government arrested some of the Falashas, then tortured them in prison. Although the radical Israelis were well aware of what their Ethiopian brethren were suffering, they avoided to make any attempts to save them. Consequently, Mesfin Ambaw, secretary of the Ethiopian Immigrants Association, declared, "The Israeli government is not interested in us at all; people have been murdered in our villages and terrible things are happening."135

"The ghetto nightmare of the Ethiopian Jews in the Promised Land," Gundem, October 10, 1992

Certain Israelis' insensitivity actually resulted from their seeking a pretext for another emigration operation they were planning for Ethiopian Jewry. They were waiting for the Falashas' miserable conditions to worsen, until the Falashas themselves would beg to leave Ethiopia for Israel. On June 16, 1991, the periodical Nokta summarized the situation:

The Israeli government at that time chose to keep silent regarding the Ethiopian government's attitude toward the Falashas because they [the Israelis] wanted to transfer more Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

The Israelis did not regard the Falashas as authentic Jews; the purpose of transferring them to Israel was chiefly to settle them on Arab territories under Israeli occupation. Therefore, Israel's policy towards the Falashas has never been a humane one. During Operation Moses in 1984, some Zionist leaders transported 7,000 Falashas to Israel. In their efforts to soothe world opinion, Israeli leaders called it a "rescue operation," but what actually occurred was far less rosy. The Falashas were not really "rescued," and many actually lost their lives during the operation! Shalom acknowledged as much, describing Operation Moses as causing "the biggest death toll of Ethiopian Jews in the last century," adding that:

Operation Moses resulted in the deaths of a thousand Ethiopian Jews... Most of the deaths occurred during the transfer through Sudan.136

Operation Magic Carpet: Yemenite Jews Deceived by the Lie that "the Messiah Appeared in Israel"

To increase immigration to Israel, new scenarios were needed. From the beginning, in fact, immigration to Palestine had been accomplished artificially. One interesting example dates from 1948, when a group of Jews from Yemen were tricked into eventually being brought to Israel.

In those years, Arab workers in Israel's agricultural sector earned high wages by doing the most difficult labor, such as domestic help or work in industry. Before long, a new solution was found to lower costs, as well as the region's Arab population. Doctor Thon, who worked for the Jewish Agency of the World Zionist Organization, had explained it in a speech in 1908:

Only an eastern Jew would work for the lower wages offered to an Arab. In this way these eastern Jews transferred to Israel will be supporting "Hebrew labor," which is the aim of Zionism, and the elimination of Palestinian labor will come as a result... If the continuous settlement of immigrating Yemen families to the pre-determined regions is successful, then another problem would be solved: The women and daughters of Yemenite families will replace Arab women as maids in the homes of immigrant families. The Arabs are earning as much as 20 to 25 francs a month.137

Between 1949 and 1950, with the "Magic Carpet Operation," 45,000 Yemenite Jews were taken to Israel with the lie that "The Messiah came to the Earth in Israel." The photo above was taken of the Yemenite Jews during the Magic Carpet Operation. The confusion, uneasiness and unhappiness on the faces does not confirm that these people are being "rescued."

A theoretical solution was found to the problem: Yemenite Jewish men would work as laborers and their women as maids, in the hardest jobs, for the lowest wages. The problem was how to persuade them to immigrate to Israel. It was solved by a quite sordid method:

In 1911 a pseudo-preacher was sent to Yemen—the "Zionist-Socialist" Warshavsky, re-named for the purpose "Rabbi Yavne'eli"—in order to announce to the Yemeni Jews the coming of the Messiah and the third Kingdom of Israel. Much later, in 1948, the Yemeni immigrants were brought to Israel in the operation called Magic Carpet. In the aircraft that conveyed them, they chanted, "David! David! [i.e. Ben Gurion] King of Israel!" This operation was carried out in two phases, between December 1948 and March 1949, and between July 1949 and September 1950, and cost $5.5 million.138

Dr. Osias Thon, who brought Yemenite Jews to Israel through falsehood

Between 1948 and 1949, Operation Magic Carpet accomplished the immigration of 50,000 Yemenite Jews. They had been deceived, and in Israel, their tragedy were just beginning. In the Promised Land, their lives would be far from the comfortable, pious ones they had been promised. On the contrary, they were greeted with the worst, most difficult jobs:

Most of these emigrants began work as farmers, and they became the labor force for industry or transportation. While clearing swamps for agriculture, many of the young people lost their lives.139

In the following years, radical sections within the Israeli government began seeking to bring in the remaining Yemenite Jews. Israeli agents set to work on another artificial motive for immigrating to the Promised Land. The daily Zaman reported on August 21, 1982:

The plan was for Listen Bismirka, an American Jew operating in Yemen, to make the rounds of Yemenite Jewry and encourage them to immigrate to Israel... Bismirka [worked] in the mountains of Yemen, trying to convince pious Jews to immigrate. Reportedly, by doing so, it is aimed to bring all Yemenite Jews to Israel.

The radical Israelis had some success in these operations. Once again, Yemenite Jews were deceived by shining words and promises, but after immigrating, their new lives offered them only trouble. Zaman adds:

Families transferred to Israel from Yemen by various duplicitous methods are reported to be in distress. Two Jewish Yemenite families wrote a special letter to the government of Yemen describing their miserable situation in Israel. These families declared their desire to return to Yemen, and expressed their misery: "We are in distress here. They took our twenty-five thousand dollars and passports. Please send us new passports and tickets so we can return to our country."

The poverty and distress that Yemenite Jews faced in Israel were so obvious that even the Israeli media reported it. Shalom, in a story picked up from the French-language Tribune Juive, described what happened to the Yemenite Jews in Israel:

Everything starts with the Magic Carpet Operation. 48,000 people are settled in maaborats [transit camps] hastily set up in Israel. The death rate in these camps is quite high. Inadequate nutrition, the exhausting trip to Israel, and the deficiencies in the health organizations in the face of so many immigrants are the basic reasons for this unfortunate situation.

In the winter of 1949, amidst freezing weather conditions, strange things began to happen in the Rosh Hasim Camp: Mothers and fathers were searching for their lost babies... This happened repeatedly. Twelve- to eighteen-month-old babies were diagnosed with some disease, then sent to hospitals or otherwise taken from their families. Next the family would be told that their child had died. But only a few families received a death certificate. Furthermore, the families were unable to learn where their children were buried. The sorrowful parents were informed that their babies had been buried hastily to prevent the spread of epidemics…

According to the statement of one witness, a mother fought to see her child... and was able to withdraw the child from the hospital. The child was perfectly healthy. The hospital authorities simply apologized and said that there had been a mistake in the hospital records. After that, a rumor spread through the maaborats: Babies are disappearing in the hospitals. In these strange unexplained circumstances it is believed that more than 500 babies were lost.140

Above: A scene from Beth Lid camp where 10,000 immigrants resided during a rainy January 1950. This photo dramatically reflects the difficulties the Yemenite Jews faced in Israel.

Thirty years later, in the 1980s, the fate of the missing hundreds of infants would come to light. From Shalom, we learn that:

News in the Israeli media has excited the Yemenite Jewish community: "We are the taken-away children of immigrants from Yemen who came to Israel 30 years ago." These are persons who were adopted by American families in their infancy, had come in search of their real parents, Jews of Yemenite origin living in Israel.

Nine years later, in a story titled "Yemenite Jews Are Searching for Their Rights in Israel," Shalom reported more about the mysteriously lost babies of Yemenite Jews:

What really happened to the 613 Yemenite babies who were taken away from their families and given to more "developed" ones? It is known that they are alive somewhere but the Israel government takes no steps to investigate the matter.141

Thus, some Israeli administrators within the inner establishment inflicted another blow on the Yemenite Jews. First, they lured them from a settled and peaceful existence in their homeland. But that wasn't enough for these Israeli leaders: They kidnapped babies from the Yemenite Jews, then told them their children were dead. This, of course, was just another lie—the children had been given to American Jews for adoption.

Some Israeli leaders did still more. During the transfer of Yemenite Jews to Israel, they confiscated thousands of ancient handwritten books and scrolls, and never returned them. The excuse was made that the books weighed too much for transport by plane; their return to their owners was solemnly promised. Not long afterward, these Israeli officials announced that there had been a fire in the hangar where the books had been unloaded, and that none could be saved.

Another photo taken in January 1950 in the Beth Lid camp, where 10,000 Yemenite Jews were forced to live under very bad conditions, and where death rates were high.

In the following years, however, various books belonging to the Yemenite Jews began to surface in locations such as the Vatican, the British Museum, and Yeshiva University. Shamefully, some Israeli officials had sold these books at auction. The scandalous story of the Yemenite books and manuscripts was broken by Shalom on November 27, 1991, under the headline "Yemenite Jews Are Searching for Their Rights in Israel."

The travails of the Jews of Yemen, and the dark policies formulated for them by certain Israelis continued.

Certain radical Israeli leaders experimented with a new method to bring Yemenite Jews to Israel. All at once, rumors began to surface everywhere that Jews in Yemen were being tortured and even killed due to their religion. The source of the rumors could not be determined. Official reports were issued on the matter. The purpose was to make the remaining Jews of Yemen feel they were unsafe there and had to immigrate to Israel. In the days that followed the initial reports, it became clear that the Israel's inner establishment was behind them, that the rumors did not reflect the truth, but were deliberate falsehoods. When the truth came out, the inner establishment panicked. To save face, they announced that "Yemenite Jews were accused of preparing false reports and spreading untrue rumors."142

In fact, the Jews of Yemen were most unlikely, and scarcely able, to have carried out such a provocative campaign. As noted, they enjoyed a settled existence in their homeland—so they had no need to spread such rumors.

Some radical Israelis, of course, claimed that the Yemenite Jews had been persecuted because of their religion before they came to Israel—but this was only to justify their own covert operations. They wanted to be seen as the saviors of Yemenite Jewry. But Shalom refuted their pretexts for the operations: "The real condition of the 1,000-1,100 Jews in Yemen is this: They are free to practice their religion. There are many synagogues in Yemen still open for public worship."143

Other Israeli Jew-Buying Methods:
Romanian Jews and the Luxembourg Agreement

Ana Pauker, former Romanian minister of foreign relations, was daughter of an Orthodox Jewish family and her brother was a leading figure of the Zionist movement. (Left)

Rabbi Rosen, an influential figure during the Ceauflescu regime, organized the migration of Romanian Jews to Israel. (Right)

What happened to the Romanian Jews forced to immigrate to Israel is similar to that of the Ethiopian Jews "purchased" from their country's leaders. The only difference is that this time, the certain circles within Israel's inner establishment did not deal directly with the Romanian authorities. This was done by a "mediator:" Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen. Romania's chief rabbi, who had great influence on the Romanian government, particularly in the Ceauşescu period, played a key role in the emigration of Romanian Jews to Israel:

The Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, who states that it is his proudest achievement that 97% of Romanian Jews left for Israel, seen during a service at the Choir Synagogue, Bucharest

In a recent newspaper article by Andrew Billen, entitled "Exodus—The Last Jews of Romania," he informs us of the work of Romania's Chief Rabbi, Moses Rosen, and the rundown of Romania's Jewish population, due to... immigration to Israel, which was never prevented during the reign of Sir [sic] Nicolae Ceauscescu, whose family had strong Jewish connections …

Rabbi Rosen says: "It is my proudest achievement that 97% of Jews left." ... Probably more interesting is the fact that Rabbi Rosen was also a member of Romania's puppet parliament which... is bringing him under scrutiny for his links with the Ceaucescu dynasty... Although Rosen has always denied any knowledge of it, Israeli [radicals were] literally allowed to buy Jews from the Romanian Government. And by 1978, according to Ion Pacepa, Romania's former Head of Security who defected to the West, the amount could range from $2,000 to $50,000 depending on the citizen's value to each state.144

Ana Pauker played an important role in laying the groundwork for the emigration of Romanian Jews to Israel. Pauker, a leading communist who formerly served as Romania's minister of foreign relations, was the elder sister of Zionist Zalman Rabinsohn. On November 20, 1952 the Communist Party tried her along with 13 communist leaders, 11 of them Jewish, in the Prague Trials for supporting Zionists.

Israel's Secret Relations with Contemporary Nazis

After World War II, Israel began a "Nazi hunt" to avenge the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But it would be fair to say that this was less a true search for justice, but a propaganda initiative of some Israeli leaders. One clear indication is that the pursuers have never gone after some prominent Nazis, only such notorious and sensational Nazis such as Eichmann.

In light of this, SS General Kurt Becher is an interesting exception. Becher was the Reich Special Commissar for all Nazi concentration camps, and if Israelis were to search for an enemy, his name should have been at the top of their wanted list. However, instead of calling for Becher's arrest and trial, certain circles of power and influence in Israel have done business with this former Nazi general! The American Jewish researcher Ralph Schoenman has revealed their relationship:

Yitzhak Rabin, a former Prime Minister of Israel

SS General Kurt Becher... was appointed Commissar of all Nazi concentration camps by Heinrich Himmler... He became president of a corporation that headed up the sale of wheat to Israel. His corporation, the Cologne-Handel Gesellschaft, did extensive business with the Israeli government.145

The "apartheid" rulers of South Africa, too, included men who were both former Nazis and close friends of Israel. South African racist Prime Minister John Vorster's relationship with Israel is of particular interest. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, professor of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, comments on a state visit Vorster made to Israel in his book The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms and Why:

For most Israelis, the Vorster visit to Israel was simply an official visit by a foreign leader... He was described by most of the Israeli press as a deeply religious man on a personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land... It took a letter to the editor of Haaretz, Israel'sNew York Times, to inform the public that Vorster had been a Nazi collaborator who, according to Israeli law, should have been arrested and put on trial the minute he set foot on Israeli soil. Instead, he landed at the Tel-Aviv airport, the red carpet was rolled out, and Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, greeted him with a warm hug. There were plenty of welcoming articles in the Israeli press.146

Beit-Hallahmi adds: "What the South Africans get from Israel, as they wage their war for survival, is first and foremost inspiration. Second is practical guidance in every facet of their military endeavor."147

Most South African leaders who admire Israel are in fact former Nazi sympathizers, as Hallahmi points out. The South African journalist Breyten Breytenbach describes this interesting situation:

What a strange identification the Afrikaners have with Israel. There has always been a strong current of anti-Semitism in the land, after all—the present rulers are the result and the direct descendants of pro-Nazi ideologues. And yet they have the greatest admiration for Israel... They identify themselves with Israel as the Biblical chosen people of God, as a modern embattled state surrounded by a sea of enemies.148

Thus Israel's inner establishment has maintained good ties with contemporary Nazis as well as with earlier ones. In reality, contrary to what is generally thought, the two ideologies of radical Zionism and fascism work together in perfect harmony, which transforms into active collaboration at every convenience.